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CAREERS OF DANGER 
AND DARING 




DIVERS AT WORK NEAR A WRECK. 



CAREERS OF DANGER 
AND DARING 



BY 



CLEVELAND MOFFETT 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY 

JAY HAMBIDGE AND GEORGE VARIAN 

AND OTHERS 




NEW YORK 

THE CENTURY CO. 



1901 

v. • 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copits Received 

OCT. 4 1901 

COPVRfQHT ENTRY 

CLASS OL XXo. No. 
COPY B. 



Copyright, 1900, 1901, by 
The Century Co. 

Copyright, 1898, by 
S. S. McClure Co. 

Copyright, 1901, by 
Cleveland Moffett. 



Published October, 1901 



THE DEVINNE PRESS. 






^ 



2>eDication 



I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO 

MY TWO LITTLE CHILDREN 

ANNE EUNICE 

AND 

CLEVELAND LUSK 

IN LOVE AND THE HOPE THAT 

IT MAY HELP THEM, AS THEY 

GROW UP, TO FORM HABITS OF 

COURAGE AND USEFULNESS. 

AUGUST, 1901. c. M. 



CONTENTS 



The Steeple-Cumber 

PAGE 

i In Which We Make the Acquaintance of " Steeple Bob " . 3 

11 How They Blew Off the Top of a Steeple with Dynamite . 14 

ill The Greatest Danger to a Steeple-Climber Lies in Being Startled 21 

IV Experience of an Amateur Climbing to a Steeple-top . . 29 

The Deep-Sea Diver 

1 Some First Impressions of Men Who Go Down Under the Sea 40 
II A Visit to the Burying-ground of Wrecks . . . -54 
in An Afternoon of Story-telling on the Steam-pump Dunderberg 63 
IV Wherein We Meet Sharks, Alligators, and a Very Tough Prob- 
lem in Wrecking . . . . . . . 71 

V In Which the Author Puts on a Diving-suit and Goes Down to 

a Wreck . . . . . . . . . • 7^ 

The Balloonist 

1 Here We Visit a Balloon Farm and Talk with the Man Who 

Runs It 87 

11 Which Treats of Experiments in Steering Balloons . . 99 

in Something About Explosive Balloons and the Wonders of 

Hydrogen . . . . . . . . . .110 

iv The Story of a Boy Who Ran Away in a Big Balloon . .117 

The Pilot 

1 Some Stirring Tales of the Sea Heard at the Pilot's Club . 130 

II Which Shows How Pilots on the St. Lawrence Fight the 

Ice-floes .......... 141 

III Now We Watch the Men Who Shoot the Furious Rapids at 

Lachine .......... 148 

IV What Canadian Pilots Did in the Cataracts of the Nile . . 160 

vii 



viii CONTENTS 



The Bridge-Builder 



I In Which We Visit a Place of Unusual Fears and Perils . 173 

11 The Experience of Two Novices in Balancing Along Narrow- 
Girders and Watching the " Traveler " Gang . . . 182 
III Which Tells of Men Who Have Fallen from Great Heights . 197 



The Fireman 

1 Wherein We See a Sleeping Village Swept by a River of Fire 

and the Burning of a Famous Hotel ..... 209 
11 What Bill Brown Did in the Great Tarrant Fire . . . 222 

III Here We Visit an Engine-house at Night and Chat with the 

Driver .......... 233 

IV Famous Rescues by New York Fire-boats from Red-hot 

Ocean Liners ......... 241 



The Aerial Acrobat 

1 Showing That it Takes More Than Muscle and Skill to Work 

on the High Bars ........ 255 

11 About Double and Triple Somersaults and the Danger of 

Losing Heart ......... 264 

in In Which the Author Tries His Hand with Professional Trapeze 

Performers . . . . ... . . . 272 

iv Some Remarkable Falls and Narrow Escapes of Famous 

Athletes 284 



The Wild-Beast Tamer 

1 We Visit a Queer Resort for Circus People and Talk with a 

Trainer of Elephants ........ 293 

II Methods of Lion-tamers and the Story of Brutus's Attack on 

Mr. Bostock 304 

III Bonavita Describes His Fight with Seven Lions and George 

Arstingstall Tells How He Conquered a Mad Elephant . 317 
iv We See Mr. Bostock Matched Against a Wild Lion and Hear 

About the Tiger Rajah 328 

v We Spend a Night Among Wild Beasts and See the Danger- 
ous Lion Black Prince . . . . . . . 339 



CONTENTS ix 

PAGE 

The Dynamite Worker 

i The Story of Some Millionaire Heroes and the World's Great- 
est Powder Explosion ....... 348 

11 We Visit a Dynamite-factory and Meet a Man Who Thinks 

Courage is an Accident ....... 358 

in How Joshua Plumstead Stuck to His Nitro-Glycerin-Vat in an 

Explosion and Saved the Works . . . . -367 



The Locomotive Engineer 

1 How it Feels to Ride at Night on a Locomotive Going Ninety 

Miles an Hour ......... 377 

11 We Pick Up Some Engine Lore and Hear About the Death of 

Giddings .......... 388 

in Some Memories of the Great Record-breaking Run from Chicago 

to Buffalo .......... 395 

iv We Hear Some Thrilling Stories at a Round-house and Reach 

the End of the Book ........ 406 



ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

About one half the chapters in this book appeared serially in " St. Nicholas Mag- 
azine," the other half in the "New York Herald," and two chapters on the Locomotive 
Engineer, and one on the Wild-Beast Tamer appeared in " McClure's Magazine." 
Thanks are extended to all these for permission to republish. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 



Divers at Work Near a Wreck .... Frontispiece 

"I had to Crawl Around and Over it" 5 

At the Top of St. Paul's, New York 10 

"Then my Partner Stood on my Shoulders" . . .12 
"Sometimes in Hard Places You have to Throw Your 

Nooses Around the Shaft" 16 

Picture of the Falling Steeple, Photographed just after 

the Dynamite Exploded. The Falling Section was 

35 Feet in Length and Weighed 35 Tons . . .20 
Looking from the Ground Upward at St. Paul's Spire, 

Broadway, New York City ....... 25 

Gilding a Church Cross, Above New York City . . .30 
How the Steeple-Climber Goes up a Flagpole . . -37 
Portrait of a Diver. Drawn from Life . . . -43 
"The Diver's Helmet Showed like the Back of a Big 

Turtle" ; 46 

Diver Standing on Sunken Coal Barge 5 1 

The Men at Work with the Air-Pump . . . -57 
"I Stayed Down until that Chain was Under the Shaft" 60 
The Man who Attends to the Diver's Signals . . -65 
A Diver at Work on a Steamboat's Propeller . . .75 
The Author going Down in a Diver's Suit . . . .80 
The Author after his First Dive. The Face-Plate has 

been Unscrewed from the Helmet . . . . 83 

"Balloon-Cloth by Hundreds of Yards" . . . .88 



xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

"Fields that Look like an Eskimo Village" . . .89 
"A Pair of Great Wings made of Feathers and Silk — 

WHICH, ALAS ! WOULD NEVER Fly" QI 

Professor Myers in his "Skycycle" 93 

How the Earth Looks when Viewed from a Height of 

One Mile. (Photographed from a Balloon.) . . .96 
Mme. Carlotta Steering a Balloon by Tipping the Foot- 
Board 100 

"In Spite of all their Skill these Indians Found Them- 
selves Presently Lifted into the Air, Canoes and 

all" . 103 

Mme. Carlotta Calls for Assistance from Another Bal- 
loonist Three Miles Away . . . . . . 107 

A Balloon-Picnic at the Aeronauts' Home . . .112 
"Stevens Came Down once with a Parachute Two Miles 
out in the Atlantic Ocean — and was Promptly Res- 
cued" 119 

The Rescue of the "Oregon's" Passengers .... 132 

A Pilot-Boat Riding out a Storm 138 

River-Buoys on the Bank for the Winter .... 145 
"Big John" Steering a Boat Through the Lachine Rapids 150 

By permission of William Notman & Son. 

Fred Ouillette, the Young Pilot 153 

The Indian Pilots Rescue Passengers from the Steamer 

on the Rocks 156 

"Man Overboard!" an Indian Canoe to the Rescue . . 158 

The Pilot, "Big John" 162 

Hauling a Steamer, up the Nile Rapids 165 

Cutting the Line — a Moment of Peril 167 

"Over they Went, the whole Black Line of them" . . 169 
How the Engineers were Carried over to the Nile Islands 170 
The Work of the Bridge- Builders. A Tower of the New 
East River Bridge. This Photograph also Illustrates 
the Narrow Escape of Jack McGreggor on the Swing- 
ing Column 175 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xiii 



PAGE 



"There was Pat, fast Asleep, Legs Dangling, Head Nod- 
ding, as Comfortable as you Please"' . . . .179 
"The Iron Street Looked Delicate, not Massive" . . 184 
Warming their Lunches at the Boiler-Fire . . . 186 

A Strange Way to go to Meals 186 

"Its Mascot Kitten, Curled up there by the Ash-Box" . 189 

Riding up on an Eighteen-Ton Column 191 

On the "Traveler." Hoisting a Strut 195 

Walking a Girder Two Hundred Feet in Air . . . 203 

Burning Oil-Tanks . . . 210 

"Snyder, White as a Ghost, Raced Ahead of the Fire" . 213 

"The very Streets are Burning" 215 

Use of the Scaling Ladders 218 

A Hot Place 224 

A Falling Wall . 231 

A Rescue from a Fifth Story 234 

At Full Speed 239 

"Into the Street of Fire, Between the Two Piers, Steamed 
the Big Fire-Boat, Straight in, with Four Streams 
Playing to Port and Four to Starboard, all Doing 

their Prettiest" 243 

Gallagher's Rescue of a Swede from the Burning Barge . 245 

Saving the Men of the "Bremen" 250 

Fire-Boats Working on the "Bremen" and the "Saale" . 253 
"As they Shoot toward the Man Hanging for the Catch 

from the Last Bar" 259 

"Four Elephants was Enough for any Man to Leap 
Over" . . . ■ . . . ... . . .267 

Circus Professionals Practising a Feat of Balancing . 279 
Through a Paper Balloon at the End of a Great Feat . 289 
How the Lioness was Captured on the Open Prairie . 295 

Man in Cage with Lions 301 

Beginning the Training 305 

Coming to Close Quarters '• • 3°7 

The Lion Destroys the Chair 3°8 



xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 



The Tamer's Triumph. Reading his Newspaper in the 

Lion's Cage 310 

Bianca Rescues Bostock from "Brutus" . . . .315 
Bonavita's Fight with Seven Lions in the Runway . . 320 
"Rajah's" Attack upon Bonavita in the Runway . . 331 
The Tiger "Rajah" Kicked by the Quagga .... 334 
Putting the Tiger "Rajah" Again upon the Elephant's 
Back . . . . . . . . . . . 337 

A Royal Bengal Tiger 345 

Young Dupont Working to Save the Powder-Mill . . 351 
Effects of Dynamite Exploded under Water . . . 354 
The Explosion in the New York City Tunnel . . . 356 

"Everything was Blown to Pieces" 361 

"He went to Work Throwing Water on the Burning 

Boxes" 365 

"A Swift, Heavy Car was Plunging toward the Open 

Door" 372 

"He Knew that a Second Explosion might Come at any 

Moment" 375 

"A Place where Yellow Eyes Glare out of Deep Shadows" 379 

At the Throttle 385 

"They Struck the Mississippi Bridge at Full Speed" . . 390 
"As the Drivers began to Turn I Jumped on the Cow- 
Catcher" 397 

A Record-Breaking Run 4 01 

"Drawn by the Idea of its Going so Blamed Fast and 

Being so Strong" ' • • 409 

"Convicts had Revolvers all Right that Trip and Denny 
Threw up his Hands" 413 



CAREERS OF DANGER 
AND DARING 



CAREERS OF DANGER 
AND DARING 

THE STEEPLE-CLIMBER 



in which we make the acquaintance of 
"steeple bob" 

DURING the summer months of 1900 — what blaz- 
ing hot months, to be sure ! — people on lower 
Broadway were constantly coming upon other people 
with chins in the air, staring up and exclaiming : "Dear 
me, is n't it wonderful !" or "There 's that fellow again ; 
I 'm sure he '11 break his neck!" Then they would 
pass on and give place to other wonderers. 

The occasion of this general surprise and apprehen- 
sion was a tall man dressed entirely in white, who ap- 
peared day after day swinging on a little seat far up the 
side of this or that church steeple, or right at the top, 
hugging the gold cross or weather-vane, Or, higher still, 
working his way, with a queer, kicking, hitching move- 
ment, up various hundred-foot flagpoles that rise from 
the heaven-challenging office buildings down near Wall 
Street. At these perilous altitudes he would hang for 
hours, shifting his ropes occasionally, raising his swing 
or lowering it, but not doing anything that his side- 
walk audience could see very well or clearly under- 
stand. Yet thousands watched him with fascination, 
and a kodak army descended upon neighboring house- 
tops, and newspapers followed the movements of 
"Steeple Bob" in thrilling chronicle. 

3 



4 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

That is what he was called in large black letters at 
the head of columns — "Steeple Bob"; but I came to 
know him at his modest quarters on Lexington Avenue, 
where he was plain Mr. Merrill, a serious-mannered 
and an unpretentious young man, very fond of his 
wife and his dog, very fond of spending evenings over 
books of adventure, and quite indifferent to his day- 
time notoriety. I call him a young man, yet in years 
of service, not in age, he is the oldest steeple-climber 
in the business, ever since his teacher, "Steeple Char- 
lie," fell from his swing some years ago in New 
Bedford, Massachusetts, and died the steeple-climber's 
death. 

I often saw books of the sea on Merrill's table, and 
accounts of whaling voyages ; and he told me, one even- 
ing (while through an open door came the snores of 
his weary partner), about his own adventurous boy- 
hood, with three years' cruising in Uncle Sam's navy 
on the school-ships Minnesota and Y antic (he shipped 
at the age of twelve) and two years at whale-fishing 
in the North Sea. Quite ideal training, this, for a 
steeple-climber ; he learned to handle ropes and make 
them fast so they would stay fast ; he learned to climb 
and keep his head at the top of a swaying masthead ; 
he learned to bear exposure as lads must who are 
washed on deck every morning with a hose, and stand 
for inspection, winter and summer, bare to the waist. 
And he gained strength of arm and back swinging at 
the oar while whale-lines strained on the sunk harpoon ; 
and patience in long stern-chases ; and nerve when some 
stricken monster lashed the waters in agony and the 
boat danced on a reddened sea. 

Merrill laughed about the climb up old Trinity's 
spire, the first climb when he carried up the hauling- 
rope and worked his way clear to the cross, with noth- 
ing to help him but the hands, and feet he was born 



THE STEEPLE-CLIMBER 



with, and did it 
coolly, while men 
on the street below 
turned away sick- 
ened with fear for 
him. 

"I 'm telling you 
the truth," said 
Steeple Bob, "when 
I say it was an easy 
climb ; any fairly 
active man could do 
it if he 'd forget the 
height. I 'm not 
talking about all 
steeples — some are 
hard and danger- 
ous ; but the one on 
Trinity, in spite of 
its three hundred- 
odd feet, has knobs 
of stone for orna- 
ment all the way up 
(they call them cor- 
bels), and all you 
have to do is to step 
from one to an- 
other." 

"How much of a 
step ?" 

"Oh, when I stood 
on one the next one 
came to my breast, 
and then I could 
just touch the one 
above that." 





I HAD TO CRAWL AROUND AND OVER IT. 



6 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

He called this easy climbing ! 

"The only ticklish bit was just at the top, where 
two great stones, weighing about a ton apiece, swell 
out like an apple on a stick, and I had to crawl around 
and over that apple, which was four feet or so across. 
If it had n't been for grooves and scrollwork in the 
stone I could n't have done it, and even as it was I had 
two or three minutes of hard wriggling after I kicked 
off with my feet and began pulling myself up." 

"You mean you hung by your hands from this big 
ball of stone?" 

"I hung mostly by my fingers; the scrolls were n't 
deep enough for my hands to go in." 

"And you drew yourself slowly up and around and 
over that 'ball ?" 

"Certainly; that was the only way." 

"And it was at the very top ?" 

"Yes, just under the cross. It was n't much, 
though; you could do it yourself." 

I really think Merrill believed this. He honestly 
saw no particular danger in that climb, nor could I 
discover that he ever saw any particular danger in any- 
thing he had done. He always made the point that if 
he had realty thought the thing dangerous he would n't 
have done it. And I conclude from this that being a 
steeple-climber depends quite as much upon how a man 
thinks as upon what he can do. 

"A funny thing happened !" he added. "After I 
got over this hard place, I slid into a V-shaped space 
between the bulging stone and the steeple-shaft, and I 
lay there on my back for a minute or so, resting. But 
when I started to raise myself I found my weight had 
worked me down in the crotch and jammed me fast, 
and it was quite a bit of time before I could get free." 

"How much time? A minute?" 



THE STEEPLE-CLIMBER 7 

"Yes, five minutes; and it seemed a good deal 
longer." 

Five minutes struggling in a sort of stone trap, 
stretched out helpless at the very top of a steeple 
where one false move would mean destruction — that 
is what Merrill spoke of as a funny thing ! Thanks, I 
thought, I will take my fun some other way, and lower 
down. 

"You would be surprised," he went on, "to feel the 
movement of a steeple. It trembles all the time, and an- 
swers every jar on the street below. I guess old Trin- 
ity's steeple sways eighteen inches every time an ele- 
vated train passes. And St. Paul's is even worse. 
Why, she rocks like a beautifully balanced cradle; it 
would make some people seasick. Perhaps you don't 
know it, but the better a steeple is built the more she 
sways. You want to look out for the ones that stand 
rigid ; there 's something wrong with them — -most likely 
they 're out of plumb." 

"Is n't there danger," I asked, "that a steeple may 
get swaying too much, say in a gale, and go clear 
over?" 

"Gale or not," said Merrill, "a well-made steeple 
must rock in the wind, the same as a tree rocks. That 
is the way it takes the storm, by yielding to it. If it 
did n't yield it would probably break. Why, the great 
shaft of the Washington Monument sways four or five 
feet when the wind blows hard." 

Then he explained that modern steeples are built 
with a steel backbone (if I may so call it) running 
down from the top for many feet inside the stone- 
work. At Trinity, for instance, this backbone (known 
as a dowel) is four inches thick and forty-five feet 
long, a great steel mast stretching down through the 
cross, down inside the heavy stones and ornaments, 



8 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

and ending in massive beams and braces where the 
steeple's greater width gives full security. 

"What sort of work did you do on these steeples?" 
I asked. 

"All kinds ; stone-mason's work, painter's work, 
blacksmith's work, carpenter's work — why, a good 
steeple-climber has to know something about 'most 
every trade. It 's painting flagpoles, and scraping off 
shale from a steeple's sides, and repairing loose stones 
and ornaments, and putting up lightning-rods, and 
gilding crosses, and cleaning smoke-stacks so high that 
it makes you dizzy to look up, let alone looking down, 
and a dozen other things. Sometimes we have to take 
a whole steeple down, beginning at the top, stone by 
stone — unless it 's a wooden steeple, and then we burn 
her down five or six feet at a time, with creosote 
painted around where you want the fire to stop; the 
creosote puts it out. Once I blew off the whole top of 
a steeple with dynamite ; and, by the way, I '11 tell you 
about that some time." 

Conversing with a steeple-climber (when he feels 
like telling things) is like breathing oxygen; you find 
it over-stimulating. In ten minutes' matter-of-fact 
talking he opens so many vistas of thrilling interest 
that you stand before them bewildered. He starts to 
answer one question, and you burn to interrupt him 
with ten others, each of which will lead you hopelessly 
away from the remaining nine. 

"Did you ever have any experiences with light- 
ning?" I asked Merrill, one day. 

"Oh, a few," he said. "A thunderbolt struck the 
Trinity steeple the very day we finished our work. We 
had just taken down our tackle and staging after gild- 
ing the cross when — by the way, they say there 's a 
hundred dollars in gold under that cross." 



THE STEEPLE-CLIMBER 9 

"Really?" I exclaimed. "How did it get there?" 

"Somebody ordered it put there when the steeple was 
built. People often do queer things like that. I 
painted a flagpole on a barn up in Massachusetts where 
there was four hundred dollars in gold hidden under 
the weather-vane. Everybody knew it was there, be- 
cause the farmer who put it there told everybody, and 
my partner was crazy to saw off the end of that pole 
some night and fool 'em, but of course I would n't 
have it." 

Here was I quite off my thunderbolt trail, and al- 
though curious about that farmer, I came back to it 
resolutely. 

"Well," resumed Merrill, "this lightning stroke came 
down the new rod all right until it reached the bell- 
deck, and there it circled round and round the steeple 
four or five times, wrapping my assistant in bluish- 
white flame. Then it took a long jump straight down 
Wall Street, smashed a flagpole to slivers, and van- 
ished. Say, there are things about lightning I 've 
never heard explained. I know of a steeple-climber, 
for instance, who was killed by lightning — it must have 
been lightning, although no one saw it strike. There 
were two of them working on a scaffolding when a 
thunder-storm came up, and this man's partner started 
for the ground, as climbers with any sense always do. 
But this fellow was lazy or out of sorts or something, 
and said he would n't go down, he 'd stay on the 
steeple until the storm was over. And he did stay 
there, without getting any harm, so far as anybody on 
the ground could see, except a wetting. Just the same, 
when his partner went up again, he found him stretched 
out on the scaffolding, dead." 

"Frightened to death?" I suggested. 

Merrill shook his head. "No, they said it was light- 




AT THE TOP OF ST. PAUL S, NEW YORK. 



THE STEEPLE-CLIMBER n 

ning; but it 's queer how lightning could kill a man 
without being seen, is n't it?" 

Then Merrill gave an experience of his own with a 
thunderbolt. It was during this same busy summer 
of 1900, while he and his partner were scraping the 
great steel smoke-stack that rises from ground to roof 
along one side of the American Tract Society Building, 
that towering structure which looks down with con- 
tempt, no doubt, upon ordinary church steeples. 

"We were in our saddles," Merrill explained, "swung 
down about two thirds of the smoke-stack's length, 
when some black clouds warned us of danger, and we 
hauled ourselves up to the roof. My partner, Walter 
Tyghe, got off his saddle and stood there where my 
wife was waiting (she often goes to climbing-jobs with 
me — she 's less anxious when she can watch me) ; but 
I thought the storm was passing over, and kept on 
scraping, sort of half resting on the cornice, half on 
my saddle. Suddenly a bolt shot down from a little 
pink cloud just overhead, and splintered a big flagpole 
I had just put halyards on, and then jumped past us 
all so close that it knocked Walter over, and made 
me sick and giddy so that I fell back limp on my sad- 
dle-board, and swung there helpless until my wife 
pulled the trip-rope that opens the lock-block and drew 
me in from the edge. That 's not the first time she 's 
been on deck at the right minute. Once she came up 
a steeple to tell me something, and found the hauling- 
line smoldering from my helper's cigarette. If that 
line had burned through it would have dropped me to 
the ground from the steeple-top, saddle, lock-block, and 
all. The man with the cigarette was so scared he quit 
smoking for good and all." 

Here, in reply to my question, Merrill explained the 
working of a lock-block, which is simply a pulley that 



12 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 




allows a rope to pass through it, but will not let it 
go back. With this block the steeple-climber can 

be hauled up easily, 
but cannot fall, even 
if the man hauling 
should let go the 
rope. When it is ne- 
cessary to descend, a 
pull on the trip-rope 
releases a safety-catch 
and the saddle goes 
down. 

"Do steeple-climb- 
ers always work in 
pairs?" I asked him. 

"Usually. It would 
be hard for one man 
to do a steeple alone. 
There are lots of 
places where you must 
have some one to fas- 
ten a rope or hold 
the end of a plank or 
pass you some- 
thing. Besides, it 
would n't be good 
for a man's mind 
to be spending 
^5^- i days and days 

upon steeples all 
alone. It 's bad 
enough with a 
partner to talk to. 
That makes me 

'THEN MY PARTNER STOOD ON MY SHOULDERS."' tlllUk Of pOOl" Old 




THE STEEPLE-CLIMBER 13 

Dan O'Brien. If I had n't been up with him one 
day — " Merrill checked himself and changed the subject. 

"I '11 give you a case where a man alone could never 
have done the thing, I don't care how clever a steeple- 
climber he might be. It was on St. Paul's, New York, 
after we had finished the job and taken everything 
down. Then somebody noticed that the weather-vane 
on top of the ball was n't turning properly. I knew in 
a minute what the matter was ; it was easy enough to 
fix it, but the thing was to reach the weather-vane. I 
don't mean that the climb up the steeple was anything ; 
we had done that before ; but if I tried to climb around 
that big ball again (it was the same sort of a wriggling 
business as that over the bulging stones at Trinity) I 
would be sure to scrape off a lot of the fine gilding we 
had just put on. And yet I could n't get at the 
weather-vane without getting over the ball. I studied 
quite a while on this little problem, and solved it with 
my partner's help. We both climbed the steeple as 
far as the ball ; we went up the lightning-rod ; then we 
roped ourselves on the steeple-shaft by life-lines, and 
then my partner, that was Joe Lawlor, stood on my 
shoulders and did the job. You see it was easy enough 
that way." 

"Easy enough !" Think of it ! Two men clinging 
to the point of a steeple. One of them braces himself 
with the toes of his rubber shoes in crannies of the 
stone, and the other, balancing on his shoulders like a 
circus performer, does a piece of work, no matter what, 
with a reeling abyss all around (what is looking over a 
precipice compared to this?), and all the time the spire 
swaying back and forth like a forest tree. And then 
you hear that, instead of getting a large sum for such 
an achievement, these men, taking it through the year, 
get scarcely more than ordinary workmen's wages. 



II 



HOW THEY BLEW OFF THE TOP OF A STEEPLE 
WITH DYNAMITE 

KNOWN over all Connecticut was the Congrega- 
tional Church in Hartford, that stood for years 
on Pearl Street, and was famous alike for the burning 
words spoken beneath its roof, and the tall, straight 
spire that reached above it; two hundred and thirty- 
eight feet measured the drop from cross to pavement. 
But churches pass like other things, and near the cen- 
tury-end came the decision by landowners and lease in- 
terpreters that this graceful length of brownstone and 
the pile beneath it must move off the premises, which 
meant, of course, that the steeple must come down, the 
time appointed for this demolition being August, 1899. 
Now, the taking down of a steeple two hundred and 
thirty-eight feet high, that rises on a closely built city 
street, is not so simple a proceeding as might at first 
appear. If you suggest pulling the steeple over, all 
the neighbors cry out. They wish to know where it is 
going to strike. Are you sure it won't smash down 
on their housetops? Can you make a steeple fall this 
way or that way, as woodmen make trees fall ? How 
do you know you can? Besides, how are you going 
to hitch fast the rope that will pull it over? And who 
will climb with such a rope to the steeple-top ? It must 
be said that there is usually some young man at hand, 
some dare-devil character of the vicinity, who is ready 

14 



THE STEEPLE-CLIMBER 15 

to try the thing and is positive he can succeed at it. 
But, luckily, he seldom gets a chance to try. 

"It 's queer," said Merrill, telling me the story, "how 
people ever built a steeple like this one without a win- 
dow in it, or an air-passage, or anything for ventilation. 
Between the bell-deck and the cross there was n't a 
single opening from the inside out, so I had to break 
my way through up near the top. What a place for 
a man to work, squeezed in the point of a stifling fun- 
nel, with no swing for his hammer, and no air to 
breathe, and the scorch of an August sun ! After fif- 
teen minutes of it, my wrists and temples would be 
pounding so I 'd have to come down and rest. 

"Of course the purpose of this hole that I knocked 
through the steeple-top was to make fast ropes and 
pulleys, so my partner and I could hoist ourselves along 
the outside, and not have to climb up the inside cross- 
beams, which, I can tell you, is a lively bit of athletics. 
Well, we got our ropes fixed all right, about twenty- 
five feet below the top, and the 'bosun's saddle' swung 
below for us to travel up and down in, and then we 
made fast another set of ropes and pulleys about fifteen 
feet higher up; this was for hoisting timber and stuff 
that we needed." 

"How did you get-up that fifteen feet?" I inquired. 

"Worked up on the stirrups — that is, two nooses 
around the steeple, each ending in a loop, one for the 
right foot, one for the left. You stand in the right 
stirrup and work the left loop up, then you stand in 
the left stirrup and work the right loop up. Sometimes 
in hard places you have to throw your nooses around 
the shaft as a cowboy casts a rope. Come down some 
day and watch us work; you '11 see the whole thing." 

To this invitation I gave glad acceptance; I cer- 
tainly wished to see this stirrup-climbing process. 



1 6 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

"The next thing," continued Merrill, "was to make 
another hole in the steeple through a keystone a little 

below our 
first hole. 




In this hole 
we set a 
block of 
Norway pine 
resting on an 
iron jack. The 
block was about 
a foot square 
and twenty-two 
inches high, a big 
tough piece, you 
see, and by screw- 
ing up the jack 
we could make 
that part as solid 
as the keystone 
was. We made 
this hole on the 
east side of the steeple, 
which was the side we 
wanted her to fall on, 
the only side she could 
fall on without injuring 
something; and we had it figured 
out so close that we dug a trench 
on that side straight out from the 
steeple's base, ten feet wide and 
four feet deep, and told people 
we intended to have the whole 
"sometimes in hard places top of that steeple, say a length 

YOU HAVE TO THROW YOUR _ 1 . - - . . - r 

nooses around the shaft." of thirty-nve feet and a weight Ot 



THE STEEPLE-CLIMBER 17 

thirty-five tons, come off at one time and land right 
square in that trench and nowhere else. That 's what 
we intended to do. 

"Now began the hoisting of materials; first a lot of 
half-inch wire cable, enough for four turns around the 
steeple, then eight sixteen-foot timbers, two inches 
thick and a foot wide, then a lot of maple wedges. 
We bandaged the steeple with the cable and drew it 
tight with tackle. Then we lowered the timbers length- 
wise inside the cable, which we could do because the 
steeple was an octagon with ornamented corners, and 
these left spaces where the wire rope was stretched 
around. Then we wedged fast the eight timbers so that 
they formed a sixteen-foot half-collar on the west side 
of the steeple just opposite our hole where the jack was. 
In other words, we had the steeple shored in so that 
when we let her go no loose stones could fall on the 
west side ; everything must fall to the east. 

"Last of all, we widened our hole on the east side, 
stripping away stones until that whole side lay open in 
a half-circular mouth about four feet high. And in 
this mouth were two teeth, one might say, that held the 
stone jaws apart, the iron jack biting into the block 
of Norway pine. On those two now came the stee- 
ple's weight, or, anyhow, one half of it. To knock 
out one of these teeth would be to leave the east side 
of the steeple unsupported, with the result that it must 
topple over in that direction and fall to the ground. 
Anyway, that was our reasoning, and it seemed sound 
enough; the only question was how we were going to 
knock out that block of Norway pine. 

"Well the day of the test came, and I guess five thou- 
sand people were there to see what would happen. 
Everybody was discussing it, and farmers had driven 
in for miles just as they do for a hanging. You under- 



1 8 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

stand I was under the orders of the contractor, and he 
had his own plan about getting the block out. He 
proposed to hitch a rope to it, drop this rope to a 
donkey-engine, in the yard, and set the engine winding 
up the rope. He said the block would have to come 
out then and the steeple fall. I agreed that the block 
might come out, but was afraid it would tip up through 
the strain coming at an angle, and throw the steeple 
over to the west, just the way we did n't want it to go. 
And if that steeple ever fell to the west, there was no 
telling how many people it would kill in the crowd, 
without counting damage to houses. 

"However, the contractor was boss, and he stuck to 
it his way was right, so we hitched the engine to the 
block and set her going. She puffed and tugged a 
little, and then snapped the rope. We got another 
rope, and she broke that too. Then we got a stronger 
rope, and the engine just kicked herself around the 
yard and had lots of fun, but the block never budged. 
All that morning we tried one scheme after another to 
make that engine pull the block out, but we might as 
well have hitched a rope to the church ; the steeple's 
weight was too much for us. And all the time the 
crowd was getting biggef and bigger, until the police 
could hardly manage it. 

"Finally the contractor, being very mad and quite 
anxious, said he 'd be hanged if he could get the block 
out, and for me to try my scheme, and do it quick, for 
some men were going about saying the thing was dan- 
gerous and ought to be stopped. He did n't have 
to speak twice before I was on my way up that steeple 
carrying an inch auger, a fifty-foot fuse, and a stick 
of dynamite — I 'd had them ready for hours. It 's 
queer how people get wind of a thing; the crowd 
seemed to know in a minute that I was going to use 
dynamite, and before I was twenty feet up the ladder 



THE STEEPLE-CLIMBER 19 

a police officer was after me, ordering me clown. I 
went right ahead, pretending not to hear, and when 
I got to the bell-deck he was puffing along ten yards 
below me. I swung into my 'bosun's saddle' and 
began pulling myself up outside the steeple, and I guess 
the whole live thousand people around the church bent 
back their heads to watch me. 

"As soon as I began to rise in the saddle I knew I 
was all right, for I coiled up the hauling-line on my 
arm so the officer could n't follow me. All he could 
do was stand on the bell-deck and gape after me like 
the rest and growl. 

"When I reached the block I bored a six-inch hole 
into her at a downward slant, and in this I put some 
crumbs of dynamite, — not much, only about half a tea- 
spoonful, — and then I stuck in the fuse and tamped 
her solid with sand. Then I lit the other end, dropped 
it down inside the steeple, and slid down the rope as 
fast as I could, yelling to the officer that I 'd touched 
her off. You ought to have seen him get out of that 
steeple ! He never waited to arrest me or anything ; 
he had pressing business on the ground ! 

"By the time I got down you could see a little trail 
of bluish smoke drifting away from the hole, and 
there was a hush over the crowd, except for the police 
trying to make them stand back behind the ropes. I 
don't know as I ever saw a bigger crowd; the street 
was jammed for blocks either way. Well, sir, that was 
a queer acting fuse. It smoked and smoked for about 
ten minutes, and then the smoke stopped. The people 
began to laugh — they said it had gone out ; and the 
contractor was nearly crazy : he was sure I had made 
another failure. I did n't know what to think; I just 
waited. We waited ten minutes, twelve minutes; it 
seemed like an hour, but nobody dared go up to see 
what the matter was. Then suddenly the explosion 



20 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

came — no louder than a pistol-crack, for dynamite 
is n't noisy, but it stirred me more than a cannon. 

" 'Start your engine !' I shouted, and the little 
dummy had just time to wind up half a turn of the 
hitch-line when the old steeple-top swayed and broke 
clean in two, right where the block was, and the whole 
upper length fell like one piece, fell to the east just as 
we had planned it, and landed in the trench, every 
stone of it ; there was n't a piece as big as your finger- 
nail, sir, outside that trench. And while she was fall- 
ing I don't know how many kodaks were snapped in 
the hope of getting a picture; men and women with 
cameras had been waiting for hours on the roofs of 
high buildings, and two or three of them actually 
caught a picture of the steeple-top as it hung in the air 
for a fraction of a second at right angles to the base." 




-A 



PICTURE OF THE FALLING STEEPLE, PHOTOGRAPHED JUST AFTER 

THE DYNAMITE EXPLODED. THE FALLING SECTION WAS 

35 FEET IN LENGTH AND WEIGHED 35 TONS. 



Ill 



THE GREATEST DANGER TO A STEEPLE-CLIMBER 
LIES IN BEING STARTLED 

IT appears that professional steeple-climbers are quiet- 
mannered men, with a certain gentleness of voice 
(like deaf people) that impresses one far more than 
any strident boasting. This habit of silence they form 
from being silent so much aloft. And when they do 
speak it is in a low tone, because that is the least star- 
tling to a man as he swings over some reeling gulf. 
Next to an actual disaster (which usually kills out- 
right and painlessly) what a steeple-climber most 
dreads is being startled. This was explained to me in 
one of our many talks by "Steeple Bob," famous over 
the land for daring feats, but never reckless ones. How 
plainly I call up his pale, serious face and the massive 
shoulders, somewhat bent, and the forearm with mus- 
cles to impress a prize-fighter ! Pleasant to note that 
Merrill uses excellent English. 

"Did you ever have an impulse to jump off a stee- 
ple?" I questioned, recalling the sensations of many 
people in looking down even from a housetop. 

"I 've kept pretty free from that," said he; "but 
there 's no doubt climbing steeples does tell on a man's 
nerves. Now, there was Dan O'Brien; he had an 
impulse to jump off a steeple one day, and a strong 
impulse, too. He went mad on one of the tallest spires 
in Cincinnati ; right at the top of it." 



22 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

"Went mad ?" 

"Yes, sir, raving mad, and I was by him when it hap- 
pened. I forget whether the church was Baptist or 
Presbyterian, but I know it stood on Sixth Street, near 
Vine, and there was a big hand on top of the steeple, 
with the forefinger pointing to heaven. We were put- 
ting fresh gilding on this hand. I was working on 
the thumb side and O'Brien on the little-finger side, 
both of us standing on tiny stagings about the size of a 
chair-seat, and both of us made fast to the steeple by 
life-lines under our arms. That 's an absolute rule 
in climbing steeples — never to do the smallest thing 
unless you 're secured by a life-line. It was coming 
on dark, and I was hurrying to get the gold leaf on, 
because we 'd given the hand a fresh coat of sizing that 
would be dry before morning. We had n't spoken for 
some time, when suddenly I heard a laugh from 
O'Brien's side that sent a shiver down my spine. Did 
you ever hear a crazy man laugh? Well, if ever you 
do, you '11 remember it. I looked at him and saw by 
his face that something was wrong. 

" 'What are you doing?' said I. 

"He answered very polite and steady like, but his 
tone was queer : 'I 'm trying to figure out how long it 
would take a man to get down if he went the fastest 

way-' 

"I thought I had better keep him in a good humor, 
so I said : T '11 tell you what, Dan, you brace up and 
get this gold on, and then we '11 race to the ground in 
our saddles.' 

" That 's a fair idea,' said he in a shrill voice, 'but 
I 've got a better one. We '11 race down without any 
saddles ; yes, sir, without any lines, without a blamed 
thing.' 

" 'Don't be a fool, Dan. What you want to do 



THE STEEPLE-CLIMBER 23 

is to get that gold on — quick.' I tried to speak 
sharp. 

" 'No, sir ; I 'm going to jump, and sO are you.' 
"I caught his eye just then and saw it was n't any 
time to bother about gold leaf. I reached up and 
eased the hitch of my line around the hand so I could 
swing toward him. I knew if I once got my grip on 
him he would n't make any more trouble. But I 'd 
never had a crazy man to deal with, and I did n't 
realize how tricky and quick they are. While I was 
working around to his side and thinking he did n't 
notice it, he was laying for me out of the corner of his 
eye, and the first thing I knew he had me by the throat 
and everything was turning black. I let go of the line 
and dropped back on my saddle-board helpless, and if it 
had n't been for blind luck I guess the people down 
below would have got their money's worth in about a 
minute. But my hand struck on the tool-box as he 
pressed me back, and I had just strength enough left to 
shut my fingers on the first tool I touched and strike 
at him with it. The tool happened to be a monkey- 
wrench, and when a man gets a clip on the head with 
a thing like that he 's pretty apt to keep still for a 
while. And that 's what O'Brien did. Lie keeled 
over and lay there, and I did, too, until my head got 
steady. Even then I guess we 'd both have fallen if 
it had n't been for the life-lines. 

"The rest was simple enough after I got my senses 
back. Dan was unconscious, and all I had to do was 
fasten a rope to him and lower away. They took care 
of him down below until the ambulance came, and he 
spent that night in a hospital. And he 's spent most 
of his years since then in an asylum, his mind all gone 
except for short periods, when he comes to himself 
again, and then he always starts out to put an end to 



24 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

me. That last impulse to destroy me has never left 
him." 

It was after this that I learned about that other dan- 
ger to steeple-climbers, of being startled. Merrill says 
that men of his craft, whether they realize it or not, 
work under constant nervous strain. However calm a 
steeple-climber may think himself, his body is always 
afraid, his muscles are always tense, his clutch on 
ropes and stones is always harder, two or three times 
harder, than the need is ; his knees hug what comes be- 
tween them so tightly that it hurts, even when they 
might safely be relaxed. That is the trouble, a steeple- 
climber cannot relax his body or control its instinctive 
shrinking. It is not looking down into the gulf around 
him that he minds (the climber who cannot do that 
with indifference is unfit for the business) ; what he 
sees he can cope with ; it is what he cannot see that does 
the mischief — what he fears vaguely. And a sudden 
noise, an unexpected movement may throw him into 
all but panic. So the veteran climber, swinging at the 
steeple-top opposite his partner, is careful to say in a 
low tone, "I "m going to lower my saddle," before he 
does lower it; or, "I 'm going to strike a match," before 
he strikes it. 

Sometimes a new helper at the hauling-line down on 
the bell-deck will shift his place from weariness or 
thoughtlessness, and let the line move up an inch or 
two, which drops the saddle an inch or two far aloft — 
drops it suddenly with a jerk. It 's a little thing, yet 
the climber's heart would not pound harder w T ere the 
whole steeple falling. Merrill told me that one of his 
greatest frights came from the simple brushing against 
his legs of a rope pulled without a word by a careless 
partner. To Merrill's nerves, all a-quiver, this was 
not a rope, but some nameless catastrophe to over- 



THE STEEPLE-CLIMBER 25 

whelm him. He knew only that something had moved 
where nothing had any business to move, that some- 
thing had touched him where nothing was. A steeple- 
climber is like a child in the dark— in terror of the 
unknown. In all the world, perhaps, there is no one 




LOOKING FROM THE GROUND UPWARD AT ST. PAUL S SPIRE, 
BROADWAY, NEW YORK CITY. 



so utterly alone as he, swinging hour after hour on 
his steeple-top. The aeronaut has with him a living, 
surging creature — his balloon; the diver feels always 
the teeming life of the waters ; but this man, lifted into 
still air, poised on a point where nothing comes or goes, 
where nothing moves, where nothing makes a sound — - 
he, in very truth, is alone. 

"It 's always the little things that frighten you," re- 



26 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

fleeted Merrill, "not the big things. I '11 give you an 
instance. When I went up inside St. Paul's steeple 
the first time (I wanted to inspect the beams, and see 
how the dowel was anchored) I got into a tight place 
that might well frighten a man. I got squeezed fast 
between timbers that fill nearly all the slender top space, 
and could n't get up or down, but just hung there, 
breathing air full of dust and calling for help. I called 
three quarters of an hour before any one came, and 
then it was only by accident. But I was n't frightened. 
On the other hand, a day or two later, when I was mak- 
ing fast a rope outside (I was just under the ball that 
holds the weather-vane) I got a bad start from noth- 
ing at all. I had my arms around the spindle of the 
steeple, making a hitch, and my head pressed against 
the copper sheathing, when I heard a most unearthly 
screech. I guess the shock of that thing did me five 
hundred dollars' worth of harm — shortened my life 
days enough to earn five hundred dollars in. And 
what do you think it was? The weather-vane had 
turned a little in the wind and creaked on its bearings, 
that 's all. It does n't seem as if that ought to scare 
a man, does it?" > 

There was something' quite touching, I thought, in 
the humble frankness of this big-shouldered man. 
Yes, he had been afraid, he whose business it was to 
fear nothing, afraid of some squeaking copper, and 
his face seemed to say that there are things about stee- 
ples not so easily explained, things not even to be 
talked about. And abruptly, as by an effort, he left 
this part of the subject and told a funny story of his 
adventures coming home late one night without a key, 
and getting in by way of the roof and an iron pipe ; a 
simple enough climb had he not been taken for a "pur- 
glaire" by an irate German lodger, who appeared in 



THE STEEPLE-CLIMBER 27 

nightgown and phlegmatic fright, and vowed he would 
"haf him a revolfer, a skelf-skooter, in the morning." 

This effort at diversion turned Merrill into gaiety 
for a moment, but straightway memory brought back 
the somber theme. 

'T '11 give you another case," said he, changing again 
abruptly, "where I was n't frightened, but should have* 
been. It was out in Chicago, and two of us were on 
a staging hung down the front of a clothing factory. 
We were painting the walls. My partner had made 
his end of the staging fast, and I had made mine fast. 
Perhaps if I 'd been longer in the business I would have 
taken more notice how he secured his rope, for it 
meant safety to me as well as him, and I knew he 'd 
been drinking, but I supposed it was all right. Well, 
it was n't all right; his rope held for three or four 
hours, and then, at just about eleven o'clock, it slipped, 
and the staging fell from under us. We were six 
stories up, and right below were the sidewalk flag- 
stones. That 's the time I ought to have been fright- 
ened, but I only said to myself, 'Hello ! this thing 's 
going down,' and caught the window-ledge in front of 
me. Then I hung there, wondering if I could pull 
myself up or if any one would come to help me. I 
called out not very loud, and I was n't excited. Pretty 
soon I saw I could n't pull myself up, for I had a poor 
hold with my fingers, and the ledge was smooth stone. 
Then I saw they 'd have to hurry if they were going 
to pull me in. Then I did n't care. I — I — " 

"You fell?" 

He nodded. 

"What, six stories down?" 

He nodded again. "The thing that saved me was 
an awning over the sidewalk. Some man across the 
way saw me hanging from the window, and he ran 



28 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

over quickly and let the awning down. I 'd like to 
shake that man by the hand, but I never knew who he 
was. When I came to myself I was at the hospital 
done up in plaster, and I stayed there nine months." 

"Badly hurt?" I asked, shrinking'. 

Merrill smiled. "It did n't do me any particular 
good. I 'm a big, strong fellow now, but I was n't 
much after that fall. Both my legs were broken. Both 
my arms were broken. My right shoulder and right 
wrist were dislocated, and — let 's see. Oh, yes, I had 
three ribs torn away from the breast-bone." 

"And your — " 

"My partner? Poor lad! You would n't care to 
hear how they found him. They laid him away kindly 
the next day." 

He smiled in a sort of appealing way, and then came 
the worn, wistful look I had noticed, and his forehead 
lines deepened. I fancy all men who follow steeple- 
climbing get those strained, anxious eyes. 



IV 



EXPERIENCE OF AN AMATEUR CLIMBING TO A 
STEEPLE-TOP 

IT came to my knowledge, one bracing clay in Octo- 
ber, that "Steeple Bob" had agreed to "do" that 
famous Brooklyn Church of the Pilgrims, with its 
queer, crooked spire and big brass ball, a landmark 
from the river on Columbia Heights. 

"It 's one of those easy jobs that are the hardest," 
said Merrill. "If you want to see us use the stirrups 
come over." 

That was exactly what I did want to see, this puz- 
zling stirrup process which allows a man to lift himself 
by his boot-straps, as it were, up the last and narrow- 
est and most dangerous length of a steeple ; so I agreed 
to be there. 

"If you like, you can go up on the swing yourself!" 
said Merrill, with the air of conferring a favor. I ex- 
pressed my thanks as I would to a lion-tamer offering 
me the hospitality of his cages, then asked how he 
meant that easy jobs are the hardest. 

"Why, easy jobs make a man careless, and that gets 
him into trouble. Another thing, little old churches 
look easy, but they 're apt to be treacherous. Now, 
this steeple on the Church of the Pilgrims is built of 
wood, with loose shingles on it, and a tumble-down iron 
lightning-rod, and rickety beams, and shaky ladders, 
and — well, you feel all the time as if you were walking 

29 







GILDING A CHURCH CROSS, ABOVE NEW YORK CITY. 



THE STEEPLE-CLIMBER 31 

on eggs. It 's just the kind of a steeple that killed 
young Romaine about a month ago." 

Of course I asked for the story of young Romaine, 
and was told of certain climbers who advertise their 
skill by using a steeple-top for acrobatic feats that have 
nothing to do with repairing. Upon such Merrill 
frowned severely. 

"Romaine was a fine athlete," said he, "and a fear- 
less man, but he went too far. He would stretch out 
on his stomach across the top of a steeple, and balance 
there without touching hands or knees, and he 'd do 
all sorts of circus tricks on lightning-rods and weather- 
vanes and flagpoles — anything for notoriety. I told 
him he 'd get killed sure some day, but he laughed at 
me. Well, it was n't a week after I warned him when 
he was killed. ' He climbed an old lightning-rod with- 
out testing it (it was on a little church up at Cold 
Spring, New York), and just as he was reaching the 
steeple-top, with a whole town watching him, the end 
of the rod pulled out, and he swung off with it, ripping 
out every dowel, like the buttons off a coat, right down 
to the ground — smash. Poor fellow, when I read the 
news I left my job at Trinity and took the first train 
up to bury him." 

This sad story lingered in my mind that night, and 
was there still the next afternoon as I drew near 
the Church of the Pilgrims to witness the first day's 
climbing. Already, at a distance, I knew that the men 
were at work from the upbent heads of people on the 
street who stared and pointed. And presently I made 
out two white figures on the steeple, one swinging about 
fifteen feet below the ball, the other standing against 
the shingled side without any support that I could see. 
Up the old tower (inside) I made my way, and two 
ladders beyond the "bell-deck" came upon Walter 



32 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

Tyghe, "Steeple Bob's" assistant, astride of a stone 
saddle on one of the four peaks where the tower ends 
and the steeple begins. There was a clear drop of a 
hundred feet all around him. He was "tending" the 
two men aloft, as witnessed a couple of ropes dangling 
by him. It was two jerks to come down and one to 
go up. Were he to lose his balance and let go the 
hauling-rope, the men on the swing would instantly be 
killed, as they had no "lock-blocks" on. 

"Come out here," said Walter, "there 's plenty of 
room," and, thus encouraged, I straddled the peak, and 
we sat face to face, as two men might sit on a child's 
rocking-horse, while the tmver pigeons circled beneath 
us, alarmed at this intrusion. Far down on the side- 
walk were little faces of distorted people ; far up at the 
steeple-top were legs kicking at ropes. And off over 
red housetops was the river, and the great towers of 
New York spread with silver plumes by the steam jets. 

"Now you can see the stirrups working," said Wal- 
ter, and, looking up, I saw a figure swing back from 
the steeple, an arm shoot out, and a length of. rope go 
wriggling around the shaft, cast like a lasso. Then the 
rope was drawn into a noose, and the noose hauled 
tight. The legs kicked, the figure hitched itself up 
about a foot, and again the rope was cast (another 
rope), and a second noose still higher made secure. 
That is all there is to it. The steeple-climber stands 
in a stirrup held by one noose while he lassoes the 
shaft above him with another noose, supporting another 
stirrup on which he presently stands. And so, foot 
by foot, the climber rises, shifting noose and stirrup 
at each change, resting now on one, now on the other, 
and finally reaching the cross, or ball, or weather-vane 
at the very top. 

"That 's Joe Lawlor chuckin' the rope," explained 



THE STEEPLE-CLIMBER 33 

Walter; "Merrill, he 's on the swing. Say, Lawlor 's 
a wonder at rigging. He can do anything with ropes. 
He 's the feller that climbs up the front of a house with 
suckers on his feet." 

Of this fact I took note, and then inquired if I 
could n't get up further inside the steeple, so as to be 
nearer the men. Walter said I could climb ladders up to 
where they had punched a hole through for the rope to 
hold the block and falls, and I tried it. Alas ! when I 
got there, after breathing dust and squeezing between 
beams, I found that I could see nothing. I was almost 
at the steeple-top, and could hear Merrill, through the 
wooden shell, humming a tune as he worked, but I was 
further away than before. 

"Hello in there !" came a voice. "Don't monkey 
with that line." And it came to me that this rope, 
reaching down by me from yonder little hole (the one 
knocked through), held the block which held the swing 
which held the man. And an accident to this rope 
would mean instant death. I touched it, and drew my 
hand away, as one might touch some animal through 
the cage bars, and I felt like saying, "Good little rope !" 

It was coming on to dark now, and we all went home 
together, over the bridge and up the avenues, talking of 
steeples the while. And Lawlor explained the action 
of his suckers in climbing walls, which is precisely that 
of a boy's sucker in lifting a brick. The big climbing- 
leathers, well soaked in oil, are pressed alternately 
against the stones, the right leg resting on one while 
the left leg presses the other against the wall a step 
higher. And so you walk right up the building or 
church or flagpole, and the smoother the surface the 
easier you go up. In fact, if the surface is rough you 
cannot use the suckers at all, as the air gets under and 
prevents their holding. 

3 



34 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

Then the men spoke of various jobs aloft that called 
up memories. Merrill told of cleaning the fifteen-foot 
Diana statue on the Madison Square Garden tower. 
"It 's hard getting over her," he said, "because she 's 
so blamed smooth. I guess I took three quarts of rust 
out of her ball-bearings. You know she 's a weather- 
vane, and turns with the wind." I wondered how 
many New-Yorkers who see the Diana, every day of 
their lives have ever dwelt on the fact that she turns. 

Talking of weather-vanes reminded my friends of 
a ticklish job they did on St. Paul's steeple, in New 
York, when Merrill, standing under the ball, held Law- 
lor on his giant shoulders so that Joe could lift off 
the weather-vane on top and ease the shaft where it 
had jammed. With Lawlor's weight and the weather- 
vane's weight, "Steeple Bob" held four hundred pounds 
on his shoulders during those important minutes, and, 
it might almost be said, stood on the dizzy edge of no- 
thing while he did it. 

Finally, Lawlor expressed the opinion that there 
is n't any meaner job in the business than a chimney. 

"A chimney?" said I. 

"That 's what. I mean one o' them big ones you see 
on factories. We have to scrape 'em and paint 'em 
just like steeples, and that means climbing up the whole 
length inside. The climbing 's easy enough on bolts 
and braces, but it 's something fierce the air you breathe. 
Why, I 've gone up a two-hundred-and- forty- foot chim- 
ney with a five- foot opening at the bottom, and found 
the soot so thick about half-way up — so thick, sir, that 
I 've been almost stuck in it. Yes, sir, just had to 
shove my head into an eight-inch hole and bore through 
black stuff, beds of it. And mind, not a hole for air as 
big as a pin-head from bottom to top." 

After bidding the men good night I reflected, with a 



THE STEEPLE-CLIMBER 35 

kind of shame, that I had drawn back from daring only 
once what they dare every day, what they must dare 
for their living. And I reasoned myself into a feeling 
that it was my duty under the circumstances to go up 
that steeple on the swing, as Merrill had proposed. 
Having begun this investigation, I must see it through ; 
and in this mind I went to the church again the next 
day. 

I found all hands on the "bell-deck" spreading out 
packets of patent gilding for the ball which awaited its 
new dress, all sticky from a fresh coat of sizing. Law- 
lor remarked that there was better gold in these little 
yellow squares than in a wedding-ring. "It 's twenty- 
four carats fine," said he, "and about as thick as a 
cobweb." 

As to my going up on the swing there was no diffi- 
culty. Lawlor would go first, and be there to keep me 
in good heart, for they say it is not well for a novice to 
be at a steeple-top alone. Merrill would see to the 
lashings, and Walter would give a hand at the hauling- 
line. Thus all conditions favored my ascent ; even the 
sun smiled, and after taking off coat and hat I was 
ready. There we were at the top of the tower, and at 
the base of the steeple Lawlor, red-faced and red- 
shirted, preparing to ascend ; Merrill, pale, as he always 
is, but powerful, standing at the ropes ; and I, in shirt- 
sleeves and bareheaded, watching Walter make a little 
harness for my kodak. 

After a time Lawlor, having reached the top, called 
down something, and Merrill answered. It was my 
turn now. I climbed out through a small window and 
stood on the ledge, while "Steeple Bob" dropped the 
swing noose over my head and proceeded to lash me 
fast to seat and ropes. 

"That 's in case a suicidal impulse should get hold 



36 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

of you !" he said, smiling, but meaning it. "Now, keep 
this rope between your legs, and work your hands up 
along it as we lift you. It 's anchored to St. Peter." 

Then he explained how I was to press my toes against 
the steeple side, so as to keep my knees from barking 
on the shingles. 

"And don't look down at all," he told me. "Just 
watch your ropes and take it easy. Are you ready?" 

At this moment Walter said something in a low tone, 
and Merrill asked me to lend him my knife. I handed 
it out, and he stuck it in his pocket. "You don't need 
this now," said he, and a moment later the pulley ropes 
tightened and my small swing-board lifted under me. 
I was rising. 

"Shove off there with your toes !" he cried. "Take 
short steps. Put your legs wider apart. Wider yet. 
You don't have to pull on the rope. Just slide your 
hands along. Now you 're going !" 

I saw nothing but the steeple side in front of me, and 
the life-line hanging down like a bell-rope between my 
spread legs, and the pulley block creaking by my head, 
and the toes of my shoes as I pressed them against the 
shingles step by step. . It struck me as a ridiculous 
thing to be climbing a steeple in patent-leather shoes. 
I smiled to think of the odd appearance I must present 
from below. And then for the first time I let my eyes 
turn into the depths, and caught a glimpse of men on 
housetops watching me. I saw Merrill's upturned 
face down where the ropes ended. And I saw little 
horses wriggling along on the street. 

There were three places where the steeple narrowed 
into slenderer lengths, and at each one was a sort of 
cornice to be scrambled over (and loose nails to be 
avoided), and then more careful steering with legs and 
toes to keep on one particular face of the steeple and 







'.'. ,' 



& 



HOW THE STEEPLE-CLIMBER GOES UP A FLAGrOLE. 



38 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

not swing off and come bumping back, a disconcerting 
possibility. "Hello !" called Lawlor presently, from 
above. "You 're doing fine. Come right along." 
And before I knew it the swing had stopped. I was 
at the top, or as near it as the tackle could take me. 
The remaining fifteen feet or so must be made with 
stirrups. And there was Lawlor standing in them up 
by the ball. There was not a stick of staging to sup- 
port him (he had scorned the bother of hauling up 
boards for so simple a job), and he was working with 
both hands free, each leg standing on its stirrup, and 
several hitches of life-line holding him to the shaft top 
by his waist. 

This steeple-lassoing exploit was one of the things 
I certainly would not attempt — would not and could 
not. 

Strangely enough, as I hung here at rest I felt the 
danger more than coming up. It seemed most per- 
ilous to rest my weight on the swing-board, and I 
found myself holding my legs drawn up, with muscles 
tense, as if that could make me lighter. Gradually I 
realized the foolishness of this, and relaxed into greater 
comfort, but not entirely. Even veteran steeple-climb- 
ers waste much strength in needless clutching; cannot 
free their bodies from this instinctive fear. 

I stayed up long enough to take three photographs 
(some minutes passed before I could unlash my kodak) , 
and here I had further proof of subconscious fright, 
for I made such blunders with shutter and focus length 
as would put the youngest amateur to shame. Two 
pictures out of the three were failures, and the third 
but an indifferent success. There is one thing to be 
said in extenuation, that a steeple is never still, but 
always rocking and trembling. When Lawlor changed 
his stirrup hitches or moved from side to side the old 



THE STEEPLE-CLIMBER 39 

beams would groan under us, and the whole structure 
rock. "She 'd rock more," said Lawlor, "if she was 
better built. A good steeple always rocks." 

There was n't much more to say or do up here, and 
presently we exchanged jerks on the line for the de- 
scent. And Lawlor cried : "Lower away ! Hang on, 
now !" And I did over again my humble part of leg- 
spreading and toe-steering, with the result that pres- 
ently I was down on the "bell-deck" again, receiving 
congratulations. 

"Here 's your knife," said Merrill, after he had un- 
lashed me. 

"What did you take it for?" I asked. 

"Oh, men sometimes get a mania to cut the ropes 
when they go up the first time. And that is n't good 
for their health. I was pretty sure you 'd keep your 
head, but I was n't taking any chances." 

After this came thanks and warm hand-grips all 
around, and then I left these daring men to their 
duties, and went down the lower ladders. I am sure 
I never appreciated the simple privilege of standing 
on a sidewalk as I did, a few minutes later, when I left 
the Church of the Pilgrims and came out into the pleas- 
ant autumn sunshine. 



THE DEEP-SEA DIVER 

i 

SOME FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF MEN WHO GO 
DOWN UNDER THE SEA 

IN old South Street, far down on the New York 
river-front, is a gloomy brick building with black 
fire-escapes zigzagging across its face, and a life-size 
diver painted over its door, in red helmet and yellow 
goggle-eyes, to the awe and admiration of the young — 
to the awe and admiration of anybody who comes 
through this wicked-looking street by night, and smells 
the sea, and stares along miles of ships' noses that 
reach right over the car-tracks, and finally stops at 
the black-lettered announcement that wrecks are looked 
after here clay or night, and mysteries of the deep 
penetrated by gentlemen of the diving profession in 
just such gigantic suits as this painted one. 

None of this had I noticed, late one night (being 
occupied with the silent, hungry ships, and the fire- 
cars trailing over the dim bridge), until a brisk banjo- 
strumming caught my ear, and I paused at the house 
of wrecks, whence the sounds came. Somebody back 
in these moldering shadows was playing the "Turkish 
Patrol," and playing it remarkably well. 

I followed the light down a narrow passage, and 
presently came upon the modern wrecker, in the person 
of Benjamin F. Bean, a large man smoking content- 
edly at a table whereon rested a telephone and phono- 

4 o 



THE DEEP-SEA DIVER 41 

graph. The phonograph was playing the "Turkish 
Patrol," and a single incandescent lamp, swinging 
overhead, illumined the scene. There were coils of 
rope about, and photographs of vessels in distress, and 
a bunk with tumbled sheets at one side, where Mr. 
Bean slept, often with his clothes on, while awaiting 
the ring of sundry danger-bells. 

Divers fully expect to be objects of curiosity, for 
never do they work except before wondering audi- 
ences ; so this one found my visit natural enough — 
was glad, I think, to talk a little and let the phono- 
graph rest. It must be rather lonely, after all, watch- 
ing for wrecks hour after hour, night after night, lis- 
tening always for footsteps (the officer's tramp or the 
thug's stealthy tread), listening always to the hoot 
of passing vessels, listening always for bad news.' 

He explained to me what happens when the bad 
news comes, say a collision up the Hudson, a ferry- 
boat on fire down the bay, a line of barges sunk in 
the Sound, any one of a dozen ordinary disasters. In 
olden times such tidings must have traveled from 
mouth to mouth, and the wreckers of those days 
flashed their calls and warnings with beacon-fires. 
Now electricity does all this much better with the click 
of a key; and presently somebody, somewhere, has the 
office at the end of a wire telling what the trouble 
is, and forthwith the man in charge puts machinery in 
motion that will change this trouble into cash. Br-r-r-r 
calls the telephone ; up spring messenger-boys in dis- 
tant all-night stations, and in half an hour door-bells 
are ringing in Harlem or Jersey City, and the men 
who ought to know things know them, and whistles 
are sounding on big pontoons that can lift two hun- 
dred tons, and sleepy men are tumbling out of their 
bunks, and great chains are clanking, and tug-boats 



42 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

are sputtering forth for the towing of sundry hoisting- 
and pumping-craft that go splashing along to the 
danger-spot with all appliances aboard, pneumatic, 
hydraulic, not to mention savory hot coffee served to 
the divers and the crew. 

Most divers are poor story-tellers (perhaps because 
the marvelous grows commonplace to them from over- 
indulgence in it), but the stories are there in their 
lives, if only you can dig them out. I asked Bean if 
he often went down himself, and found that he was 
still in active service, after twenty-odd years of it, 
which certainly had agreed w T ith him. He was just 
back from a sad errand in Pennsylvania. A boy had 
gone swimming in a slate-quarry, and been drowned; 
they had dragged for him, and fired cannon over the 
water, but nothing had availed, and so, finally, a diver 
was sent for from the city, the diver being Bean. The 
quarry was a great chasm four or five hundred feet 
deep, with eighty feet of water filling various galleries 
and rock shelves, in one of which the poor lad had been 
caught and held. The question was in which one. 

"Well," said Bean, coming abruptly to the end, "I 
went down and got him." 

That was his way of telling the story : he "went 
down and got him." There was nothing more to say; 
nothing about the two days' perilous search through 
every tunnel and recess of those rocky walls; nothing 
about the three thousand excited people who crowded 
around the quarry's mouth, awaiting the issue, nor the 
scene when that pitiful burden was hauled up from 
the depths. 

I asked Bean if he had ever been in great danger 
while under the water. 

"Nothing special," he said, and then added, after 
thinking: "Once I had my helmet twisted off." 




PORTRAIT OF A DIVER. DRAWN FROM LIFE. 



44 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

"What, below?" 

He nodded. 

"How can a diver live with his helmet off?" 

"He can't, usually. 'T was just luck they got me 
up in time. They say my face was black as a coal." 
And he had no more to tell of this adventure. 

With few exceptions, divers take their career in 
exactly this phlegmatic, matter-of-fact way. I fancy 
a man of vivid imagination would break under the 
strain of such a life. Yet often divers will go into 
great details about some little incident, as when Bean 
described the hoisting of a certain boiler sunk outside 
of Sandy Hook. It had been on a tug-boat of such a 
name, it was so many feet long and wide, and other 
things about the tide and the steam-derrick, and what 
the captain said, the point being that this boiler had 
acted as an enormous trap for the blackfish, of which 
they had found some hundreds of big ones splashing 
about inside, unable to escape. 

So our talk ran on, and all the time I was thinking 
how I would like to see these things for myself. And 
it came to pass, as the subject kept its hold on me, 
that I did see them. Indeed, I spent a whole summer 
month — and found zest in it beyond ordinary summer 
pleasurings — in observing the practical operations of 
diving and wrecking as they go on in the waters about 
New York. I discovered other wrecking companies, 
notably one on West Street, and from the head man 
here learned many things. He took me out on a 
pier one day, where one of his crews was rescuing 
thirty thousand dollars' worth of copper buried under 
the North River. Every few minutes, with a chunk- 
chunk of the engine and a rattle of chains, the dredge 
would bring up a fistful of mud (an iron fist, holding 
a ton or so) and slap it down on the deck, where a 



THE DEEP-SEA DIVER 45 

strong hose-stream would wash out little canvas bags 
of copper ore, each worth a ten-dollar bill in the 
market. 

"This will show you," said the expert, "what a 
diver has to contend with at the bottom of a river. 
He often sinks four or five feet in the mud, just as 
those bags sink, and sometimes the mud suction holds 
him down so hard that three men pulling on the life- 
line can scarcely budge him. And when the mud lets 
go the diver comes out of it like a cork from a bottle. 
You can feel him flop over, clean tuckered out with 
kicking and working his arms. They let him lie 
there a minute or two to rest, and then pull him up. 
Why, vessels will sink ten or twelve feet in the mud, 
so that the diver has to take a hose down, and wash 
a tunnel out below the keel, to get a lifting-chain 
under." 

"Wash a tunnel out?" I inquired. 

"That 's what they do. You know how you can 
bore a hole in a sand-bank, don't you, with a stream 
of water? Well, it 's just the same with a mud-bank 
down below, only you need more pressure. Some- 
times we use a stream of compressed air. The diver 
steers the hose just as a fireman steers the fire-hose, 
and once in a while gets knocked over by the force 
of it, just as a fireman does." 

Tunneling mud-banks under water, with streams of 
water or streams of compressed air, struck me as de- 
cidedly a novelty. I was to hear of stranger things 
ere long. 

My guide presently pointed out a splendidly built 
young man who was shoveling mud off the deck, not 
far from us. 

"There," said he, "is a case that illustrates the worst 
of this business. That fellow is made to be a diver; 



46 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

he 's intelligent, he 's not afraid, and he can stand 
having the suit on ; he 's been down two or three times 
and done easy jobs of patching. If he "d keep straight 
for a year or two, he could earn his ten dollars a day 
with the best of them. But he won't keep straight. 
The poor fellow drinks. We can't depend on him. 




"the diver's helmet showed like the back of a big turtle." 

And here he is, shoveling mud for a dollar and a 
quarter a day, and no steady work at that." 

Ten dollars a day seemed a handsome wage, and I 
asked if divers generally earn so much. 

"Good ones do, and a diver's day is only four hours' 
long, or less when they go to great depths. And they 
draw a salary besides, and often receive handsome 
presents. You ought to see our chief diver, Bill At- 
kinson; he lives in a brownstone house." He paused 



THE DEEP-SEA DIVER 47 

a moment, and then added : "But I guess they earn all 
they get." 

A few days later I made Mr. Atkinson's acquain- 
tance on board the steam-pump Dunderbcrg, then busy 
raising a coal-barge sunk off Fourteenth Street in the 
East River. 

Atkinson was down doing carpenter-work on holes 
stove in her, and I stood on deck beside the man "tend- 
ing" him, and watched the bubbles boil up from the 
diver's breathing, and the signals on a rubber hose 
and a rope. It was less air or more air, by jerks on 
the hose. It was rags for a leak, or a heavier hammer, 
or a piece of batten so-and-so long, with nails ready 
driven at the corners — all were indicated by pulls on 
the life-line or the startling appearance of hands or 
fingers (Atkinson's), that would now and then reach 
above water and move impatiently. The wreck was 
only five or six feet under, and the diver's helmet 
showed like the back of a big turtle whenever he stood 
up straight on the sunken deck. 

Suddenly there is a scurry of barefoot youths along 
the pier timbers. The diver is coming up. Now he 
lifts himself slowly under the crushing weight, one 
short step at a time up the ladder. No man at all is 
this, but a dripping three-eyed monster of rubber and 
brass, infinitely fascinating to wharf loungers. The 
"tender" twists off the face-glass, and Atkinson says 
something with a snap in it, and explains what he is 
trying to do at the forward hatch. Then he leans 
over the rail on his stomach and rests. Then he goes 
down again. 

"He 's the best-natured man I know, Bill is," re- 
marked Captain Taylor, commander of the Dunder- 
bcrg; "but all men get irritable under water. Why, 
I 've had men who would n't swear for the world up 



48 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

in the air tell me they rip out cuss words something 
terrible down on the bottom. Just seems like they 
can't help it." 

I noticed that the tender did not join in our talk, 
but stood with hands on his lines and eyes on the 
water, absorbed in his responsibility; he looked like 
an angler about to land a big fish. Neither did the 
men at the air-pump talk. This feeding breath to a 
diver is serious business. 

"How long would he live, do you think," I asked, 
"if the pump should stop?" 

"Mebbe a minute, mebbe two," said Captain Tay- 
lor. "I knew a Norwegian who was down in fifty 
feet of water when the hose busted. It busted on 
deck, where the tender heard it, and he started to lift, 
right away. It could n't have been over a minute be- 
fore they had him up, but he was so near dead the 
doctors worked three hours on him before he came 
around. That '11 give you an idea of how far gone 
he was." 

The captain told of other desperate chances faced 
by divers in his experience : of a hose and life-line 
fouled in a wreck ; of an escape-valve frozen shut, in 
winter-time, by the diver's congealed breath; of a hel- 
met smashed through by a load of pig-iron falling 
from its sling ; of a diver dragged off a wreck by a 
drifting pontoon — such a record of thrilling escapes 
and tragedies as any wrecking-master could run over. 
One realized why insurance companies refuse to take 
risks on divers' lives, and why the diver's pay is 
large. 

Before long Atkinson came up again, and an- 
nounced that everything was ready, holes stopped and 
suction length in place. Two men helped undress 
him, while the others set the big eight-inch pipe to 



THE DEEP-SEA DIVER 49 

pumping out the wreck, and soon it was spurting a 
thick stream over her side like a fire-tower. 

Presently the dinner-bell rang from a tiny cabin 
below, and I had the honor of breaking bread with 
the crew of the Dunderberg and two of the company's 
stanchest divers, Atkinson and Timmans, both small, 
thin men with wrinkled faces, both the heroes of many 
adventures. Here was indeed a chance to find out 
things ! 

One of my first questions turned upon the effect of 
diving on a man's hearing. Was it true, as I had 
read, that divers often have one or both of their ear- 
drums ruptured by the water-pressure? 

Both men thought not ; most divers of their acquain- 
tance had good hearing. 

"Diving often kills a man straight out," said Tim- 
mans ; "but, aside from that, I don't think it injures 
his health. Ain't that right, Bill?" 

Atkinson nodded. He had observed that divers al- 
most never take cold or have trouble with their lungs, 
although they are constantly exposed to all weathers, 
and often live and sleep in wet clothes for days and 
nights. As a young man, he himself had been a book- 
keeper, in delicate health. People thought he had con- 
sumption. So he gave up bookkeeping and, by acci- 
dent, became a diver. He had never had a sick day 
since, and he had worn the suit now for twenty-nine 
years. 

"About a man's ears," said he; "there 's no doubt 
you get a pressure in 'em when you go down, and the 
pressure gets harder and harder the deeper you go, 
that is, until your ears crack." 

"Crack?" said I. 

"Well, that 's what we call it, but I don't suppose 
anything really cracks. After you get down, say, 

4 



50 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

thirty feet, your ears hurt a good deal, especially if by 
chance you have a little cold; and you keep opening 
your mouth and swallering to make the crack come, 
and the first thing you know, you hear a sound inside 
your head like striking a match ; that 's the crack, and 
then you can go on down as far as you please, and 
you won't feel any more pain in your ears until you 're 
coming up again ; then you get a reverse crack. They 
say it 's the air working in and out of your head. I 
don't know what it. is, but I know some men's ears 
won't crack, and those men can't never make divers." 

"How deep can a diver go down?" I inquired. 

The company smiled at this, and turned to Atkin- 
son, who smiled back, and then referred modestly to 
one of the deepest dives on record, one hundred and 
fifty feet, made by himself some years before up the 
Hudson. He had a pressure of six atmospheres on 
him at that depth, and could stay down only twenty 
minutes. "I '11 tell you about that some other day," 
said he. "It \s pretty near time now for me to be 
sweeping up this coal." 

Then, answering my look of surprise at the word 
"sweeping," he explained how they lessen the weight 
of a sunken barge by first pumping out the water in 
her, and then pumping out the coal. The same suc- 
tion-pipe does both, and will discharge thirty-five or 
forty tons of coal an hour, on a chute which holds the 
coal while the water streams through. During this 
operation the diver is down in the barge, moving the 
suction-end back and forth, up and down — the "sweep- 
ing" in question — until no more coal is left for its 
hungry mouth. 

"We pump grain out of wrecks in the same way," 
said Atkinson, "tons and tons of it ! and they dry it 
in ovens and sell it. A man must look sharp, though, 



THE DEEP-SEA DIVER 



5i 



and not get himself caught. We had a diver — he was 
new at the business — who got his knee against the 
suction-pipe one day while he was pumping coal, and 




DIVER STANDING ON SUNKEN COAL BARGE. 



it held him as if he was nailed there. He was so 
scared he tore himself loose; but he had to rip a piece 
out of his suit to do it. He stayed down, though, just 
the same." 

"What! — with a hole in his suit?" 



52 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

"That does n't matter, as long as it 's only in the 
leg. You see, the air in the helmet presses down 
hard enough to keep the water below a man's neck. 
But he must n't bend over so as to let his helmet get 
lower than the hole." 

"I should say not!" put in Timmans. 

"Why, what would happen if he did?" 

"He 'd be killed quicker than you can wink. The 
air from the helmet would rush out at the hole, and 
he 'd be crushed by the weight of the water." 

I don't know whether Mr. Atkinson realized the 
full truth of his words, but I found, on consulting the 
authorities, that a diver's body at thirty-two feet is 
subjected to a pressure of water amounting to forty 
tons, at sixty-four feet to eighty tons, at ninety-six 
feet to one hundred and twenty tons, etc. And it is 
only the great counter-pressure in the helmet of air 
from the air-pump that enables the diver to endure 
this otherwise deadly weight. It follows that the 
deeper a diver goes, the harder work it is for the air- 
pump men to drive air down to him ; and at great 
depths as many as four men are sometimes needed at 
the pump to conquer .the water resistance and keep 
open the escape-valve (for air breathed out) at the hel- 
met-top. 

Here ended this day's talk, for the coal would wait no 
longer ; Atkinson must go down again to his "sweep- 
ing." But there were other days for me aboard the 
Dundcrbcrg — other glimpses into these brave, simple 
lives. Think what these fellows do ! Here is a huge, 
helpless vessel at the bottom of a bay, with the tide 
tearing her to pieces, and down into the depths comes 
a queer little man, as big as one of her anchor-points, 
and stands beside her in the mud, and feels her over, 
and decides how he will save her; and then does it — 



THE DEEP-SEA DIVER 53 

does it all alone. And what he does is never the same 
as anything he has done before ; for each wreck is a 
new problem, each job of submarine patching has its 
own difficulties and dangers. Oh, bored folk, idle 
folk, go to the wreckers, say I, if you want a new 
sensation; watch the big pontoons put forth their 
strength, watch the divers, and (if you can) set the 
crew of the Dunderberg to telling stories. 



II 



A VISIT TO THE BURYING-GROUND OF WRECKS 

1ITTLE by little, one picks up lore of the divers — 
j small things, yet edifying. In summer a diver 
wears underneath his suit, to keep him cool, the same 
flannel shirt and thick woolen socks that he wears in 
winter to keep him warm. But he wears mittens in 
winter on his hands, which are bare in summer. On 
the bitterest day in January he finds comparative 
warmth in deep water, as he finds a chill there in torrid 
August. Summer and winter he perspires very freely, 
and a little work brings him to the limit of his strength, 
the strain being chiefly on the lungs. The deeper he 
goes the more exhausting becomes every effort. 

A diver often endures real suffering (like the foot- 
tickling torture) because he cannot scratch his nose 
or face, and they tell of one man who worked in 
great distress because, when he got down, he found a 
June-bug in his helmet, and had to bear the insect's 
lively promenading over his features, powerless to 
stop it. And there was a diver who, in bravado, used 
to smoke a cigarette inside his helmet. 

Divers, as a class, are not superstitious. Seldom do 
their thoughts down below stray into realms of fan- 
tasy, nor have they time to dream, but only to ham- 
mer, and saw, and ply the crowbar, and drive iron 
spikes twenty inches long into huge timbers — in short, 
to attend strictly to their work. 

54 



THE DEEP-SEA DIVER 55 

It is amusing to note the scorn of practical clivers 
for the nice electric-lighting and telephone contriv- 
ances of divers who never dive, but sell their inven- 
tions to the Government for its Newport diving 
school, which same inventions remain, for the most 
part, in their spick-span boxes. It seems simple 
enough to have submarine lights; yet divers who dive 
prefer to grope in the almost darkness of our ordinary 
waters. It seems a distinct advantage that diver and 
tender be able to talk over a wire ; yet divers who dive 
keep jealously to the clumsy system of jerks on the 
lines, and will not even be bothered with the Morse 
alphabet. The fact is, a diver has quite as much as 
he can attend to with the burden of his suit (about a 
hundred and seventy-five pounds), and his two lines 
to watch and keep from kinks and entanglements. 
Touch one of these lines, and you touch his life. Fas- 
ten a new line to him, or two new lines, and you enor- 
mously increase his peril. Imagine yourself stum- 
bling about in a dark forest, with a man strapped on 
your back, and several ropes dragging behind you 
among trees and rocks, each separate rope being to 
you as breath and blood ! That is precisely the 
diver's case. So he goes ; so he works. And when 
they offer him pretty apparatus to increase his load, 
he will have none of it. Nor will he tug any extra 
ropes. "I have ways enough of dying as it is," 
says he. 

Working thus in gloom or darkness, the diver de- 
velops his senses of feeling and locality. He gains 
certain qualities of blind men, and finds guidance in 
unlooked-for ways. The ascending bubbles from his 
helmet, for instance, shine silver white and may be 
seen for a couple of fathoms. These bubbles have a 
trick of lodging in a vessel's seams, and so give the 



56 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

diver a rough pattern of her. Again, in searching for 
leaks, the sense of hearing helps him, for he can dis- 
tinguish (after long habit) the sucking sound of water 
rushing through the holes. 

One is sorry to learn that divers go to pieces early; 
few of them last beyond fifty. As they grow old their 
keenness wanes ; they lose their bearings easily down 
below, and show bad judgment. And fear of the 
business grows upon them. Often they seek false 
courage in strong drink, which hurries on the end. 
Too many of them, after searching all their lives for 
wrecks, wind up as wrecks themselves. But it is good 
to know that there are exceptions — divers like Bill 
Atkinson, sturdy and true at fifty, and good in the 
suit for years to come, unless t'.ieir "wives persuade 
them to retire. The diver's wife, I am told — poor 
woman! — starts with terror every time she hears a 
door-bell ring. 

I must speak now of the burying-ground for wrecks, 
one of the strangest, saddest, most interesting bury- 
ing-grounds I can think of. It was a disaster to the 
tug-boat A merica that brought me there, this ill-fated 
craft having been cut half through iii the North River 
and sunk by a great liner she was helping into dock. 
The America went down forthwith in sixty feet of 
water — sank so suddenly that all aboard her had to 
cast themselves into the water and fight for it. The 
fireman and the cook, not knowing how to swim, fought 
in vain, and ended their lives there. It is astonishing 
how many men who follow the sea as a business can- 
not swim. Well, in due course the wreckers came 
up to lift the tug-boat, and Atkinson (who cannot 
swim either) directed the job. They swung chains 
under her, fore and aft, they "jacked her up" nearly 
to the surface, and then, while four pontoons held her, 



THE DEEP-SEA DIVER 



57 






THE MEN AT WORK WITH THE AIR-PUMP. 



the Pinafore, the Catamaran, and two others (only the 
working crews know the names of these pontoons), 
they all splashed slowly up the river under tow of the 
wrecking-tug Fly, and finally came to the burying- 
ground of wrecks. Here they '''jacked her up" some 
more (it was "We 've got her!" "Slack away now!" 
and "R'heh-eh-eh !" as the men strained at the blocks), 
and then they grounded her on the mud, where wrecks 
have been grounded for years, and left her, with all 
the others, to rust and ruin and rot. 

But before they grounded her there was a long time 



58 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

to wait for high tide — time for a good meal on the 
Catamaran, and a talk about hazards of the sea as 
divers know them. It was then that Atkinson told 
me the promised story of his deepest dive. I wish all 
men who do big things would speak of them as simply 
as he did. 

"It 's like this," said he: "in diving, the same as 
in other things, every man has his limit; but he can't 
tell what it is until the trial comes. At this time I 'm 
talking about (some ten years ago) I thought a hun- 
dred feet about as deep as I wanted to go. If there 
are two hundred divers in the country, you can bet on 
it not ten of them can go down over a hundred feet. 
Well, along comes this job in the middle of winter 
— a head-on collision up the Hudson off Fort Mont- 
gomery, and a fine tug-boat gone to the bottom. We 
came up with pontoons to raise her, and Captain Tim- 
mans (he 's the father of Timmans the diver) ordered 
Hansen down to fix a chain under her shaft — there 's 
the man now." 

A big Scandinavian in the listening circle looked 
pleased at this mention. He was Hansen. 

"We knew by the sounding that she lay in a 
hundred and fifty feet of water on a shelf of bot- 
tom over a deeper place, and Hansen was a little 
anxious. He got me to tend him, and I remem- 
ber he asked me, when I was putting the suit on 
him, if I thought he could do it. Remember that, 
Hansen?" 

Hansen nodded. 

"I told him I thought I could do the job myself, so 
why should n't he? but that was partly to encourage 
him. 

"Anyhow, Hansen went down, and I got a signal 
'All right' from him when he struck the bottom. Then 



THE DEEP-SEA DIVER 59 

the line kept very still, and pretty soon I jerked it 
again. No answer. So I knew something was 
wrong, and began to haul him up quick, telling the 
boys to turn faster. He was unconscious when we 
got him on deck, but he soon came round, and said he 
felt like he 'd been dreaming. He '11 tell you if that 
ain't right." 

"It 's right," said Hansen. 

"We could n't work any more that day, on account 
of the tide, but Captain Timmans said the thing had to 
be done the next morning, and wanted Hansen to try 
it again; but Hansen would n't." 

"Was n't no use of trying again," put in Hansen. 

"That 's it; he 'd passed his limit. But it seems 
I had a longer one. Anyhow, when the captain called 
on me, I got into the suit and went down, and I stayed 
down until that chain was under the shaft. It took 
me twenty minutes, and I don't believe I could have 
stood it much longer. The pressure was terrible, and 
those twenty minutes took more out of me than four 
hours would, say, at fifty feet. But we got the tug- 
boat up, and she 's running yet." 

After this Hansen told a story showing what power 
the suction-pipes exert in pumping out a vessel. He 
was working on a wreck off City Island, at the en- 
trance to the Sound. He had signaled for rags to 
stuff up a long crack, and the tender had tied a bundle 
of them to the life-line, and lowered it to him by slack- 
ing out the line. All this time the pump was work- 
ing at full pressure, throwing out streams from the 
wreck through four big pipes. Suddenly the life-line 
came near the crack, and was instantly drawn into it 
and jammed fast, so that Hansen would have been 
held prisoner by the very rope intended to save him, 
had it not been for the slack paid out, which was for- 



6o CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 




" I STAYED DOWN UNTIL THAT CHAIN WAS 
UNDER THE SHAFT." 



tunately long enough 
to bring him up. 
Had it been his hand 
or foot that was 
seized in that suck- 
ing clutch, the inci- 
dent, would have had 
a sadder ending. 

Then came other 
stories, until the day 
was fading and the 
tide was right, and 
Atkinson was ready 
for the grounding of 
this soaked and bat- 
tered tug-boat. Pres- 
ently he calls "Look 
out for that rope. 
Get yer jacks ready. 
Now slack away !" 
And forthwith pul- 
leys are creaking 
and great chains are 
grinding down link 
by link as the men 
pump at the little 
"jacks" and the for- 
ty-foot timbers that 
stretch across pon- 
toons and hold the 
wreck-chains groan 
on their blocks, and 
at last the America 
comes to rest safely, 



THE DEEP-SEA DIVER 61 

ingloriously on the mud. Poor America! so proud and 
saucily tooting only the other day, now a bedraggled 
wreck on these Weehawken flats, destined to what 
fate who knows ? To be lifted from the mud, patched 
up, rebuilt, quarreled over by owners and insurance 
people, or perhaps simply left here, with the others, 
for wharf-rats to swarm in and boys to go crab- 
bing on ! 

The burying-ground of wrecks ! What a sight 
from the rugged height back of the water ! Plere are 
blackened, shapeless hulks from the great river fire of 
1900, when red-hot liners drifted blazing to these very 
flats. Here is the ferry-boat River Bell, decked with 
flags in her day, and danced on by gay excursionists, 
now thick with mud and slime, her deck-beams spongy 
under foot, her wheel-frames twisted like a broken 
spiders-web. Here are the half-sunken halves of 
some ice-barge, cut clean in two by a liner. Here, 
heaving with the tide, is an aged car-float with a 
watchman's shanty on it, heaped with its rusted boil- 
ers, its anchors, cranes, gear-wheels, cables, pumps, a 
tangle of iron things that were once important. Here 
is a scuttled tug-boat that has been in a law-suit ( and 
the mud) for years. Here is a coal-barge, wedged 
open and sunk by her owner to steal the insurance 
money. Wrecks spread all about us, and above them 
rise the masts and cranes of pontoons and pumping- 
craft, that seem, in the shadows and desolation, like 
things of evil omen guarding their prey. 

Night is coming on. Lights show in the great city 
across the river. Ferry-boats pass. Lines of barges 
pass. Whistles sound. The waves splash, splash 
against the wrecks, touching them gently, one would 
say. But nobody else cares. Nobody comes near. 



62 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

Nobody looks. The divers go home. The wrecking- 
crews eat and turn in to sleep. A rat squeals some- 
where. These helpless, crippled hulks are alone in the 
night, and they grind, grind against decaying stumps. 
They are wrecks, they are dead, they are buried — and 
yet they can move a little in the mud ! 



Ill 



AN AFTERNOON OF STORY-TELLING ON THE 
STEAM-PUMP "dUNDERBERG" 

WHEN there is difficult diving to be done in the 
East River, or in any river where the tide runs 
strong, you will see the wrecking-boats swing idly at 
anchor for hours waiting for slack water, the only 
time when divers dare go down. And often there is 
half a day's waiting for half an hour's work, and often 
a week goes by on a two hours' job, say, in full mid- 
stream, where not even the most venturesome beginner 
will stay down more than twenty minutes at the turn, 
lest he be swept away, ponderous suit and all, by the 
rush of the river. It 's start your patch and leave it 
to be ripped open by the beating sea; it 's get your 
chain fast nine weary times, and have it nine times 
torn away over night by some foolish, bumping tug- 
boat; in fact, it 's worry and aggravation until the 
thing is over. 

Also, this is the time of times, if you can get aboard, 
to make acquaintance with the wreckers, to pick up lore 
of the diving-suit and tales of the divers. 

It was bad weather when we, on the sturdy old 
Dunderberg, were busy at a wreck off the Brooklyn 
shore, not far from Grand Street ferry (I had as 
much to do with lifting this wreck as the pewter 
spoons stuck around the little cabin). It was n't 
much of a wreck anyhow — only a grain-boat — but it 
had my gratitude for stubbornly refusing to come up. 

63 



64 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

And so we had hours to spend down in the cabin afore- 
said, which could barely hold cook-stove and dining- 
table, but managed to be parlor and bedroom besides ; 
also laundry on occasions. The Dundcrbcrg, I should 
explain, was originally a mud-scow, but for good con- 
duct and an injury to her nose had been changed into 
a steam-pump. She could suck her forty tons of coal 
an hour out of a wreck with the best of them. And 
she traveled with four pontoons, no one of which could 
touch her in table fare, especially coffee. 

Late one afternoon, when the rain was drizzling 
and the swinging brass lamps lit, we sat about on 
wooden stools (and some were curled up in bunks 
along the walls) and listened to the talk of Atkinson 
and Timmans and Hansen, who had seen and done 
strange things in their time. 

They were discussing the escape-valve in a diver's 
helmet, and arguing whether it pays to stiffen the 
spring for very deep diving. Atkinson, who had 
worked eight fathoms deeper than either of them, said 
he left his spring alone ; he used the same suit and the 
same valve action for any depth. 

"But I look out for sand-banks," said he, "ever 
since that fellow — you know who I mean — had one 
cave in on him in the North River. He was tunneling 
under a vessel with a wall of sand beside him higher 
than his head, and the first thing he knew he was flat 
on his back, with sand jammed in his valve so it 
could n't open. It was n't a minute before he was 
shot up to the surface like a balloon. The reason of 
that," he explained for my benefit, "is because a diving- 
suit with its valve shut gets lighter and lighter as they 
drive down air from the air-pump, until all of a sud- 
den it comes up, man and all, just as a plank would if 
you held it on the bottom and then let it go." 



THE DEEP-SEA DIVER 



65 




THE MAN WHO ATTENDS TO THE DIVER'S SIGNALS. 



"Talking about planks coming up," said Timmans, 
who was seated under the picture of a prize-fighter, 
"I was down on the North German Lloyd steamer 

5 



66 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

Main, the one that was burned and sunk, fixing a 
suction-pipe to pump grain out of her, when a big 
wooden hatch got loose and came up under me. I 
was working between decks, and the hatch swung me 
right up against the overhead beams and held me there, 
squeezing the life-line and hose so tight I could n't 
signal. It 's lucky the hose was wire wound, or that 
would have been the last of me. But I got my air all 
right, and after a while I worked free." 

"Wire wound and all," observed Atkinson, "I 've 
had my hose squeezed so the air was shut off. I was 
on a wreck off one of the Hoboken docks once, when 
an eight-inch suction-pipe caught the hose coming 
down through a hatch, and the next second I felt my 
air stop, though I could hear the pump beating. I 
jerked 'slack away' on the life-line, and that loosed 
the hose and saved me, but I got a blast of compressed 
air as the jam eased that jumped me up a yard." 

"Suppose your life-line had been jammed, too," I 
asked, "so that you could n't jerk 'slack away' ?" 

Atkinson paused to think. "There 's a difference 
of opinion about how long a man can live on the air 
that 's in his helmet. • Some say three or four min- 
utes. I don't believe it. I think two minutes would 
do the business." 

"There was George Seaman — " began Timmans. 

"Yes," said Atkinson, taking up the story, as was 
a senior's right, "there was George Seaman, who put 
trust in the argument of Tom Scott and Low and some 
of those old-timers, that a man can cut his hose and 
press his thumb quick against the hole and live long 
enough on what air 's in the helmet to reach the top. 
Years ago they used to give that talk to us youngsters, 
but I notice none of 'em ever tried it. Well, Seaman, 
he did try it; he was down on a wreck somewhere 



THE DEEP-SEA DIVER 67 

along Sixtieth Street, and his hose got caught in the 
timbers. The life-line was all right, and he was get- 
ting air enough, only when they tried to haul him up 
he stuck on account of the hose. They tried three 
times to lift him, and each time he 'd come up a few 
feet and stick, and then they 'd have to let him fall 
back. You can see that 's awful discouraging for a 
man, especially when he 's tired and cold. If Seaman 
had kept his nerve and waited they 'd prob'bly have 
sent another diver down to get him untangled, but he 
did n't keep his nerve. All he saw was that the hose 
was caught and he could n't free it, and they could n't 
get him up. It 's a lot easier to get rattled at the 
bottom of a river than up in the air, and Seaman 
called to mind what he 'd heard about stopping the 
hole with your thumb, and he got out his knife. All 
divers carry a knife fast to the suit. See, like this." 
He drew a two-edged knife, a wicked-looking weapon, 
out of its leathern sheath, and moved his thumb along 
the edge. 

"Then Seaman he felt for the hose, and made ready 
to cut. His idea was, you see, to slash the hose at one 
stroke, then jerk on the life-line to be hauled up quick, 
and keep the hole shut with his thumb while he came 
up. I can picture him now with his knife on the hose, 
sort of praying a minute, like a man might with a knife 
at his throat. That 's what it amounted to. Well, 
he wrote the story of what he did right there on the 
hose, and wrote it plain. They 've got the piece at 
the office, and they '11 show it to you if you ask 'em. 
Seaman made his cut with about two men's strength ; 
I '11 bet not one of you boys could do near as well as 
he did at cutting a hose through with one stroke. His 
slash came clear through all but a shaving of rubber, 
and he tried to cut that with a second stroke; but the 



68 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

knife struck a new place about an inch away, and he 
slashed her half through there. Then he tried nine 
times more, and made nine separate cuts at the hose; 
and there they are to-day, about half an inch apart, 
each one a little shallower than the one before, and 
the last two or three only scratches on the outside. 
That was just as he died, and you can figure out how 
long it prob'bly took him to make those eleven knife 
strokes. I suppose there ought to be thirteen, but 
eleven 's what there is. You '11 count 'em." 

Not only did I count them, these eleven tragic cuts, 
but I have the piece of hose to this day. The office 
people gave it to me, and never do I look but with 
a shiver at this dumb record in diminuendo of agony 
and sacrifice. 

"I suppose that settled the question of stopping a 
hose with your'thumb?" I remarked. 

"That 's what it did !" said Atkinson. 

After this there were more stories. I can't begin 
to say how many more. Eve^ time a diver goes 
down, one would say, something new happens to him, 
something worth telling about. Hansen related an 
experience of his with a conger eel. Atkinson told 
how a Dock Department diver named Fairchild was 
blown to death under forty feet of water when twenty- 
eight pounds of dynamite he was putting in for blast- 
ing went off too soon. Timmans told how he fainted 
away once, one hundred and five feet down, and an- 
other time let the water into his suit by pulling out 
a helmet lug on a foolish wager. And that reminded 
Atkinson of the time his gasket (the rubber joint under 
the collar) was cut through by the slam of an iron 
ladder, and the air went out "Hooo," and a quick jerk, 
on the life-line was all that saved him. Last of all they 
told the story of old Captain Conkling and the Hoi- 



THE DEEP-SEA DIVER 69 

yoke Dam, a story known to every diver. It seems 
there was a leak in this dam, and the water was rush- 
ing through with so strong a suction that it seemed 
certain death for a diver to go near enough to stop the 
leak. Yet it was extremely important that the leak 
be stopped — in fact, the saving of the dam depended 
on it. So Captain Conkling, who was in charge of 
the job, induced one of his divers to go down, and 
reluctantly the man put on his suit, but insisted on 
having an extra rope, and a very strong one, tied 
around his waist. 

"What 's that for?" asked Conkling. 

"That 's to help get my body out, if the life-line 
breaks," said the diver. 

"Go on and do your work," replied Conkling, who 
had little use for sentiment. 

It happened exactly as the diver feared. He was 
drawn into the suction of the hole, and when they 
tried to pull him up both hose and life-line parted, 
and the man was drowned, but they managed to 
rescue his body with the heavy line, just as he had 
planned. 

Then Conkling called for another diver, but not a 
man responded. They said they were n't that kind 
of fools. 

"All right," said the captain, in his businesslike 
way; "then I '11 go down myself and stop that hole." 
And he called the men to dress him. 

At this time Captain Conkling was seventy-five years 
old, and had retired long since from active diving. 
But he was as strong as a horse still, and no man had 
ever questioned his courage. 

In vain they tried to dissuade him. "I '11 stop that 
hole," said he, "and I don't want any extra rope, 
either." 



70 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

He kept his word. He went down, and he stopped 
the hole, but it was with his dead body, and to-day 
somewhere in the Holyoke Dam lie the bones of brave 
old Captain Conkling, incased in full diving-dress, 
helmet and hose and life-line, buried in that mass of 
masonry. No man ever dared go down after his body. 



IV 



WHEREIN WE MEET SHARKS, ALLIGATORS, AND 
A VERY TOUGH PROBLEM IN WRECKING 

TIMMANS, whom I used to call the strident diver, 
because of his keen observation and capacity for 
wonder, leaned against the step-ladder that reached 
down from hatch to cabin on the Dunderberg, and re- 
marked, while the others listened : "I did a queer job 
of diving once down into the hold of a steamship, a 
National liner, that lay in her dock, blazing with elec- 
tric lights, and dry as a bone. Just the same, I needed 
my suit when I got down into her — in fact, I 
would n't have lasted there very long without air from 
the pump. 

"Some queer cargo?" suggested Atkinson. 

"That 's it. She was loaded with caustic soda, or 
whatever they make bleaching-powder of — barrels and 
barrels of it, with the heads broke in after a storm, 
and it was n't good stuff to breathe, I can tell you. 
First they set men shoveling it out, with sponges in 
their mouths, against the dust and gases, but one man 
coughed so hard he tore something in his lungs or head 
and died. Then they sent for a diver — that was me — 
and I worked hours down there hoisting and shovel- 
ing, like I was at the bottom of the bay, only there 
was no water to carry the weight. Say, but was n't 
that suit heavy, and when I looked out through my 
helmet-glasses it seemed as if I was digging through 

71 



72 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

a snow-field, with such a terrible dazzle it made my 
eyes ache to look at it." 

"I suppose you don't usually see much under 
water?" said I. 

"Depends on what water it is," answered Timmans. 

"All rivers around New York are .black as ink 
twenty feet down," remarked Atkinson. 

"I know they are," said Timmans, "but I 've seen 
different rivers. When I was diving off the Kenne- 
bec's mouth, five miles southeast of the Seguin light 
(we were getting up the wreck of the Mary Lee), 
then, gentlemen, I looked through as beautiful clear 
water as you could find in a drug-store filter. Why, 
it reminded me of the West Indies. I could see plainly 
for, well, certainly seventy-five feet over swaying kelp- 
weed, eight feet high, with blood-red leaves as big 
as a barrel, all dotted over with black spots. There 
were acres and acres of it, swarming with rock-crabs 
and lobsters and all kinds of fish." 

"Any sharks?" said I. 

Hansen and Atkinson smiled, for this is a question 
always put to divers, who usually have to admit that 
they never even saw a shark. Not so Timmans. 

"I had an experience with a shark," he answered 
gravely, "but it was n't up in Maine. It was while 
we were trying to save a three-thousand-ton steamer 
of the Hamburg- American Packet Company, wrecked 
on a bar in the Magdalena River, United States of 
Colombia. I 'd been working for days patching her 
keel, hung on a swinging shelf we 'd lowered along her 
side, and every time I went down I saw swarms of 
red snappers and butterfish under my shelf, darting 
after the refuse I 'd scrape off her plates; and there 
were big jewfish, too, and I used to harpoon 'em for 
the men to eat. In fact, I about kept our crew sup- 



THE DEEP-SEA DIVER 73 

plied with fresh fish that way. Well, on one particu- 
lar day I noticed a sudden shadow against the light, 
and there was a shark sure enough ; not such an 
enormous one, but twelve feet long anyhow — big 
enough to make me uneasy. He swam slowly around 
me, and then kept perfectly still, looking straight at 
me with his little wicked eyes. I did n't know what 
minute he might make a rush, so I caught up a ham- 
mer I was working with — it was my only weapon — 
and struck it against the steamer's iron side as hard 
as I could. You know a blow like that sounds louder 
under water than it does in the air, and it frightened 
the shark so he went off like a flash." 

"Perhaps he was n't hungr)^" laughed one of the 
crew. 

"Not hungry? I '11 tell you how hungry those 
sharks were. They 'd swallow big chunks of pork, 
sir, nailed and wired to barrel heads, as fast as we 
could chuck 'em overboard; swallow nails, wire, barrel 
heads, and all, and then we 'd haul 'em in by ropes, 
that did for fish-lines, only it took twenty or thirty 
men to do the hauling. And there were plenty of 
sharks 'round, only they never seemed to tackle a man 
in the suit." 

"Some say it 's the fire-light of the valve bubbles 
that scares sharks off," commented Atkinson. "I 
don't know what it is, but I know the bubbles shine 
something wonderful as you watch 'em boiling up 
out of your helmet." 

"Phosphorescence," I suggested, and then went back 
into the talk for some broken threads. 

"How about that steamer you were telling about," 
I asked; "the one that was wrecked on the bar? Did 
you save her?" 

"I should say we did," replied Timmans, "and I 



74 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

guess the company wished we had n't; it cost them 
more money than the job was worth. Why, if I 
should start telling how we saved that steamer I don't 
know when I 'd get through. It took us eight solid 
months. Yes, sir, and that meant sixty men to feed 
and pay wages to — forty in the wrecking-crew and 
twenty on the tug. Oh, but we did have trouble — 
trouble all the time, but we had fun, too, especially 
when some o' these gay Bowery lads we 'd picked 
up -got loose on the mainland. Talk about scraps!" 

Timmans paused as if for invitations to spin the 
whole yarn, and these he immediately received. 

"Tell about painting the alligator," urged Hansen. 

"Oh, that was a bit of foolishness me an' another 
fellow done. He was a Dutchman, and got me to help 
him catch an alligator one day. He said he could 
bring him up North and get a big price for him. Well, 
we noosed one after a whole lot of chasing in a lagoon, 
and kept him four or five weeks, but he would n't eat, 
and the boys all gave us the laugh. So the Dutchman 
got up a scheme to paint him white and put him back 
in the lagoon. His idea was that this white alligator 
would scare out all the other alligators, and then we 'd 
capture mebbe twenty or thirty on the banks, and 
make our fortune." 

He paused a moment with a twinkling eye, and Han- 
sen snickered. 

"Well, we done it. We painted that alligator white, 
and put him back in the lagoon, and you can shoot me 
if those other alligators did n't eat him. Yes, sir ; 
they chewed him clean up before we 'd hardly got the 
ropes off him." 

"What did the Dutchman say?" asked Hansen, 
shaking with mirth. 

"He stuck to it his idea was all right, but it was the 



THE DEEP-SEA DIVER 



75 



blamed alligator's fault for being too weak with fast- 
ing to fight the ones as were n't painted, and he 
wanted somebody to help him catch another, but no- 
body would." 




A DIVER AT WORK ON A STEAMBOAT S PROPELLER. 



Then Timmans came back to the saving of the 
wreck, and it really was an amazing story of patience 
and ingenuity against endless obstacles. I doubt if 
men from anywhere but America would have carried 
such a hopeless undertaking through to success. First 
they rigged up a wire railway from wreck to shore, 
and slid off a valuable cargo of alpaca, silks, and beer 



76 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

bit by bit along the wire to land (where they con- 
scientiously drank the beer). Then they hitched a 
hawser to the steamer, and by clever engineering man- 
aged to drag her off the bar against the river current ; 
but presently this current, sweeping down from the 
mountains, grew too swift for the wrecking-tug, and 
she in turn was dragged down stream against all the 
strength of her engines, and saw herself threatened 
with destruction on the bar. Then the captain of 
the tug, in his peril, ordered the hawser cut, and 
thirty-nine men of the wrecking-crew were left to 
their fate on the abandoned wreck. Their adven- 
tures alone would make a thrilling chapter, but they 
were rescued finally from the half-sinking steamer, 
after she had somehow crossed the bar and wrecked 
herself anew in the breakers some miles down the 
coast. 

Then weeks passed while the wrecking-crew worked 
at patching the steamer's holes so that she would float, 
and every day Timmans went down in his suit and 
did blacksmith work and carpenter work on her torn 
plates and beams, in constant danger of being crushed 
in the deep sand trough she rocked and slid in. Some- 
times the whole iron hull, beaten against by the ocean, 
would go grinding along, breaking down a wall of 
sand ten feet high, almost as fast as Timmans could 
walk. And to be caught between her side and that 
wall would have ended his days forthwith. Diving- 
suit and man would have been crushed like an egg- 
shell. 

Finally, when she was ready they made fast a six- 
teen-inch hawser, and put on full steam to pull her off 
into deep water. Off she came, and all was going 
well with the towing when a fierce tropical storm came 
upon them, and the steamer turned broadside to its 



THE DEEP-SEA DIVER 77 

fury, and the great hawser snapped like a kite-string, 
and back she went on a coral-reef. 

Once more they began at the beginning, and in time 
had another hawser ready, and tried again. This time 
the hawser parted by grinding on the beach as they 
dragged her. 

Then, after long delay, they got a sixteen-inch haw- 
ser, wound with wire, that would resist the friction of 
rocks and sand, and all would have happened as they 
hoped had not a sawfish, sent by the evil power that 
thwarted them, thrust its jagged weapon through the 
hawser strands, piercing the wire and severing the big 
tow-line. The wrecking company still shows the saw 
of that mischievous fish among its curiosities. 

So Timmans's narrative ran on endlessly, with de- 
tails of how they stopped some fresh leaks with sixty- 
five barrels of cement, and how they quelled a mutiny 
and how they finally got the steamer off, and rigged up 
a patent rudder that steered her over twenty-five hun- 
dred miles, until they landed her home, two hundred 
and fifty-odd days after the expedition started. All 
going to show the kind of stuff American wreckers are 
made of. 



V 



IN WHICH THE AUTHOR PUTS ON A DIVING-SUIT 
AND GOES DOWN TO A WRECK 

ONE day I asked Atkinson, as master diver of the 
wrecking company, if he would let me go down 
in his diving-suit; and he said yes very promptly, 
with an odd little smile, and immediately began telling 
of people who, on various occasions, had teased to go 
down, and then had backed out at the critical moment, 
sometimes at the very last, just as the face-glass was 
being screwed on. It was a bit disconcerting to me, 
for Atkinson seemed to imply that I, of course, would 
be different from such people, and go down like a vet- 
eran, whereas I was as yet only thinking of going 
down ! 

"There 's a wreck, on the Hackensack," said he; 
"it 's a coal-barge sunk in twentyfeet of water. We '11 
be pumping her out to-morrow. Come down about 
noon, and I '11 put the suit on you." 

Then he told me how to find the place, and spoke 
as if the thing were settled. 

I thought it over that evening, and decided not to 
go down. It was not worth while to take such a risk ; 
it was a foolish idea. Then I changed my mind : I 
would go down. I must not miss such a chance; it 
would give me a better understanding of this stiange 
business; and there was no particular danger in it, 
only a little discomfort. Then I wavered again, and 

7 8 



THE DEEP-SEA DIVER 79 

thought of accidents to divers, and tragedies of diving. 
What if something went wrong! What if the hose 
burst or the air- valve stuck ! Or suppose I should in- 
jure my hearing, in spite of Atkinson's assurance? 
I looked up a book on diving, and found that certain 
persons are warned not to try it — full-blooded men, 
very pale men, men who suffer much from headache, 
men subject to rheumatism, men with poor hearts or 
lungs, and others. The list seemed to include every- 
body, and certainly included me on at least two 
counts. Nevertheless I kept to my purpose ; I would 
go down. 

It was rising tide the next afternoon, an hour before 
slack water (slack water is the diver's harvest-time), 
when the crew of the steam-pump Dunderberg gath- 
ered on deck to witness my descent and assist in dress- 
ing me ; for no diver can dress himself. The putting 
on a diving-suit is like squeezing into an enormous 
pair of rubber boots reaching up to the chin, and pro- 
vided with sleeves that clutch the wrists tightly with 
clinging bands, to keep out the water. Thus incased, 
you feel as helpless and oppressed as a tightly stuffed 
sawdust doll, and you stand anxiously while the men 
put the gasket (a rubber joint) over your shoulders 
and make it fast with thumb-screws, under a heavy 
copper collar. Next you step into a pair of thirty- 
pound iron shoes that are strapped over your rubber 
feet. And now they lead you to an iron ladder that 
reaches down from rail to water. You lift your feet 
somehow over the side, right foot, left foot, and feel 
around for the ladder-rungs. Then you bend forward 
on the deck, face down, as a man would lay his neck 
on the block. This is to let the helpers make fast 
around your waist the belt that is to sink you pres- 
ently with its hundred pounds of lead. Under this 



8o CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 




THE AUTHOR GOING DOWN IN A DIVER S SUIT. 

belt you feel the life-line noose hugging below your 
arms, a stout rope trailing along the deck, that will 
follow you to the bottom, and haul you back again 



THE DEEP-SEA DIVER 81 

isafely, let us hope. Beside it trails the precious black 
hose that brings you air. 

Now Atkinson himself lifts the copper helmet with 
its three goggle-eyes, and prepares to screw it on. The 
men watch your face sharply; they have seen novices 
weaken here. 

"Want to leave any address?" says Captain Taylor, 
cheerfully. 

I admit, in my own case, that at this moment I felt 
a very real emotion. I watched two lads at the air- 
pump wheels as if they were executioners, though both 
had kind faces, and one was sucking placidly at a clay 
pipe. I thought how good it was to stay in the sun- 
shine, and not go down under a muddy river in a 
diving-suit. 

"Wait a minute," I cried out, and went over the sig- 
nals again — three slow jerks on the life-line to come 
up, and so on. 

Now the helmet settles down over my head and jars 
against the collar. I see a man's hands through the 
round glasses crisscrossed over with protecting wires ; 
he is screwing the helmet down tight. Now he holds 
the face-glass before my last little open window. "Go 
ahead wid de pump," calls a queer voice, and forth- 
with a sweetish, warmish breath enters the helmet, 
and I hear the wheeze and groan of the cylinders. 

"If you get too much air, pull once on the hose," 
somebody calls ; "if you don't get enough, pull twice." 
I wonder how I am to know whether I am getting 
too much or not enough, but there is no time to find 
out. I have just a moment for one deep breath from 
the outside, when there is no more "outside" for me ; 
the face-glass has shut it off, and now grimy fingers 
are turning this glass in its threads, turning it hard, 
and hands are fussing with hose and life-line, making 

6 



82 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

them fast to lugs on the helmet-face, one on each side, 
so that the hose drops away under my left arm, and 
the life-line under my right. Then I feel a sharp tap 
on my big copper crown, which means I must start 
down. That is the signal. 

I pause a moment to see if I can breathe, and find 
I can. One step downward, and I feel a tug at my 
trousers as the air-feed plumps them out. Step by 
step I enter the water; foot by foot the river rises to 
my waist, to my shoulders — to my head. With a roar 
in my ears, and a flash of silver bubbles, I sink beneath 
the surface; I reach the ladder's end, loose my hold 
on it, and sink, sink through an amber-colored region, 
slowly, easily, and land safely (thanks to Atkinson's 
careful handling) on the barge's deck just outside her 
combings, and can reach one heavy foot over the depth 
of her hold, where tons of coal await rescue. A jerk 
comes on the life-line, and I answer that all is well; 
indeed, I am pleasantly disappointed, thus far, in my 
sensations. It is true there is a pressure in my ears, 
but nothing of consequence (no doubt deeper it would 
have been different), and I feel rather a sense of ex- 
hilaration from my air-supply than any inconvenience. 
At every breath the whole suit heaves and settles with 
the lift and fall of my lungs. I carry my armor easily. 
It seems as if I have no weight at all, yet the scales 
would give me close to four hundred pounds. 

The fact is, though I did not know it, my friends 
up in the daylight were pumping me down too much 
air (this in their eager desire to give enough), and I 
was in danger of becoming more buoyant that is good 
for a diver; in fact, if the clay-pipe gentleman had 
turned his wheel just a shade faster I should have 
traveled up in a rush — four hundred pounds and all. 
I learned afterward that Atkinson had an experience 



THE DEEP-SEA DIVER 



83 




THE AUTHOR AFTER HIS FIRST DIVE. THE FACE-PLATE HAS BEEN 
UNSCREWED FROM THE HELMET. 



like this, one clay, when a green tender mixed the sig- 
nals and kept sending down more air every time he 
got a jerk for less. Atkinson was under a vessel's 
keel, patching a hole, and he hung on there as long as 



84 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

he could, saying things to himself, while the suit 
swelled and swelled. Then he let go, and came to the 
surface so fast that he shot three feet out of the 
water, and startled the poor tender into dropping his 
line and taking to his heels. 

Needless to say, that sort of thing is quite the re- 
verse of amusing to a diver, who must he raised and 
lowered slowly (say at the speed of a lazy freight ele- 
vator) to escape bad head-pains from changing air- 
pressure. 

I sat down on the deck and took note of things. 
The golden color of the water was due to the sunshine 
through it and the mud in it — a fine effect from a mean 
cause. For two or three feet I could see distinctly 
enough. I noticed how red my hands were from the 
squeeze of rubber wrist-bands. I felt the diving-suit 
over, and found the legs pressed hard against my body 
with the weight of water. I searched for the hammer 
and nail they had tied to me, and proceeded to drive 
the latter into the deck. I knew that divers use tools 
under water — the hammer, the saw, the crowbar, etc. 
— almost entirely by sense of feeling, and I wanted to 
see if I could do so. The thing proved easier than I 
had expected. I hit the nail on the head nearly every 
time. Nor did the water resistance matter much ; my 
nail went home, and I was duly pleased. I breathed 
quicker, after this slight exertion, and recalled Atkin- 
son's words about the great fatigue of work under 
water. 

I stood up again and shuffled to the edge of the 
wreck. Strange to think that if I stepped off I should 
fall" to the bottom (unless the life-line held me) just 
as surely as a man might fall to the ground from a 
housetop. I would not rise as a swimmer does. And 
then I felt the diver's utter helplessness : he cannot lift 



THE DEEP-SEA DIVER 85 

himself; he cannot speak; he cannot save himself, ex- 
cept as those lines save him. Let them part, let one of 
them choke, and he dies instantly. 

And now the steady braying of the air-pump beat 
sounded like cries of distress, and the noise in my ears 
grew like the roar of a train. All divers below hear 
this roaring, and it keeps them from any talking one 
with another : when two are down together, they com- 
municate by taps and jerks, as they do with the tenders 
above. I bent my head back, and could see a stream 
of bubbles, large ones, rising, rising from the escape- 
valve like a ladder of glistening pearls. And clinging 
to my little windows were myriad tiny bubbles that 
rose slowly. The old Hackensack was boiling all 
about me, and I saw how there may well be reason in 
the belief of some that this ceaseless ebullition from 
the helmet (often accompanied by a phosphorescent 
light in the bubbles) is the diver's safeguard against 
creatures of the deep. 

Well, I had had my experience, and all had gone well 
— a delightful experience, a thing distinctly worth the 
doing. It was time to feel for the life-line and give the 
three slow pulls. Where was the ladder now ? I was a 
little uncertain, and understood how easily a diver 
(even old-timers have this trouble) may lose his bear- 
ings. There ! one, two, three. And the answer comes 
straightway down the line — one, two, three. That 
means I must stand ready; they are about to lift me. 
Now the rope tightens under my arms, and easily, 
slowly, I rise, rise, and the golden water pales to silver, 
the bubbles boil faster, and I come to the surface by 
the ladder's side and grope again for its rungs. How 
heavy I have suddenly become without the river to 
buoy me ! This climbing the ladder is the hardest task 
of all ; it is like carrying two men on one's back. Again 



86 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

I bend over the deck, and see hands moving at my win- 
dows. A twist, a tug, and off comes the face-glass, 
with a suck of air. The test is over. 

"You done well," is the greeting I receive; and the 
divers welcome me almost as one of their craft. 
Henceforth I have friends among these quiet men 
whose business it is to look danger in the eye (and 
look they do without flinching) as they fare over river 
and sea, and under river and sea, in search of wrecks. 



THE BALLOONIST 



HERE WE VISIT A BALLOON FARM AND TALK 
WITH THE MAN WHO RUNS IT 

I NEVER knew a man who has been so many things 
(and been them all fairly well) as has Carl Myers 
of Frankfort, New York. They call him "Pro- 
fessor" Myers ever since he took to ballooning, years 
ago; but they might call him Dr. Myers, for he has 
studied medicine, or Wrestler Myers, for he is skilled 
in all tricks of assault and defense, Japanese and others, 
or Banker Myers, for he spent years in financial deal- 
ings, or Printer Myers, for he still sets up his own type, 
or Telegrapher Myers, or Lecturer Myers, or Carpen- 
ter Myers, or Photographer Myers. 

All these callings (and some others) Myers has pur-, 
sued with eagerness and success, only making a change 
when driven to it by his thirst for varied knowledge 
and his guiding principle, "I refuse to let this world 
bore me." To-day the professor is sixty years old 
(a thin, wiry, sharp-eyed little man), yet I suspect 
some boys of sixteen who read these pages feel older 
than he does. You ought to hear him laugh ! or tell 
about the air-ship that has carried him over thirteen 
States! or describe his "balloon farm" at Frankfort! 
I don't know when I have enjoyed myself more than 
during three days Professor Myers spent with me some 

Suppose we begin with the balloon farm, which is 

87 



88 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

certainly a queer place. It is a joke in the neighbor- 
hood that the professor plants his balloon crop in the 
spring, gathers it in the fall, and stores it away through 
the winter. Certain it is that in summer-time the vis- 
itor (and visitors come in swarms) sees fields marked 
off in rows with stakes and cross-poles, on which bal- 




" BALLOON-CLOTH BY HUNDREDS OF YARDS. 



loon-cloth by hundreds of yards seems to be growing 
(really, it is drying) ; and other fields, that look like 
an Eskimo village, with houses of crinkly yellowish 
stuff (really, half-inflated balloons) ; and groups of 
men boiling varnish in great kettles which are always 
getting on fire and may explode ; and other men work- 
ing nimbly at the knitting of nets ; and others experi- 
menting with parachutes; and the professor paddling 
away at the height of three thousand feet for his after- 



THE BALLOONIST 



89 




FIELDS THAT LOOK LIKE AN ESKIMO VILLAGE. 



noon "skycycle" sail ; and Mme. Carlotta, the cele- 
brated aeronaut (also the professor's wife), making 
an ascension now and then from the front lawn in a 
chosen one of her twenty-odd balloons. 



90 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

And in winter, should you explore the upper rooms 
of the house, you would find all the balloons tucked 
away snugly in cocoons, as it were, fast asleep, ranged 
along the attic floor, each under its net, each ticketed 
with a record of its work, marked for good or bad con- 
duct after it has been tested by master or mistress. 

For weeks at a time in the experiment season a cap- 
tive balloon hovers above the Frankfort farm, say 
twelve hundred feet up, and the tricks they play with 
that balloon would draw all the boys in the country, if 
their parents would let them go. Three guy-ropes 
hold the balloon steady like legs of an enormous tripod, 
and straight down from the netting a fourth rope hangs 
free. Now, imagine swinging on a rope twelve hun- 
dred feet long ! They do that often for tests of flying- 
machines or aeroplanes — swing off the housetop, and 
sail away in a long, slow curve, just clearing the 
ground, and land on top of a windmill at the far side 
of the grounds. That 's a swing worth talking about ! 
And fancy a man hitched fast to this rope by shoulder- 
straps, and as he swings flapping a pair of great wings 
made of feathers and silk, and trying to steer with a 
ridiculous spreading tail of the same materials. The 
professor had a visit from such a man, who had spent 
years and a fortune in contriving this flying device, 
which, alas ! would never fly. 

Professor Myers, like most aeronauts, insists that 
traveling by balloon, for one who understands it, is no 
more perilous, but rather less so, than ordinary travel 
by rail or trolley or motor carriage. He points out 
that for thirty-odd years he and his w T ife have led a 
most active aeronaut existence, have done all things 
that are done in balloons, besides some new ones, and 
got no harm from it — some substantial good rather, 
notably an aerial torpedo (operated by electricity from 



THE BALLOONIST 



9i 




"a pair of great wings made of feathers and SILK — WHICH, 
alas! would never fly." 



the ground), which flies swiftly in any desired direc- 
tion, its silken fans and aluminum propeller under per- 
fect control from a switchboard; also the "skycycle" 
balloon, which lifts the aeronaut in a suspended saddle 
and allows him, by the help of sail propeller and flap- 
ping aeroplanes (these driven by hands and feet), to 
make a gain on the wind, when going with it, of ten or 
twelve miles an hour. On this "skycycle" Professor 
Myers has paddled hundreds of miles, not trying to 
go against the wind, but selecting currents from the 
many available ones that favor his purpose. "What is 



92 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

the use," says he, "of fighting' the wind when you can 
make the wind fight for you? People who take trains 
or boats wait for a certain hour or a certain tide, in the 
same way we wait for a certain wind current, and there 
is never long to wait, for the wind blows in totally dif- 
ferent directions at different altitudes." 

"Can you know with precision," I asked, "about 
these varying currents ?" 

"We can know a good deal by studying the clouds 
and by observations with kites and other instruments. 
And we would soon know much more if experimenters 
would work on these lines of conquering nature by 
yielding to her rather than opposing her." 

In my talks with Professor Myers, of which there 
were rnany, we went first into the spectacular side of 
ballooning, the more obviously interesting part, stories 
of hair-breadth, escapes and thrilling adventure, of the 
fair lady who assumed marriage vows sailing aloft over 
Herkimer County, of Carlotta's recent trip, ninety miles 
in sixty minutes with natural gas in the bag, of the 
English aeronaut who leaped from his car to death in 
the sea that a comrade might be saved through the 
lessened weight, of two 'lovesick Frenchmen who duelled 
with pistols from rival balloons, while all Paris gaped 
in wonder from the earth and shuddered when one 
silken bag, pierced by a well-aimed shot, dashed down 
to death with principal and second. And many more 
of that kind which, I must say, leave one far from con- 
vinced on the non-danger point. 

Then the professor dwelt upon various odd things 
about balloons — this, for instance, that the rapid rise of 
an air-ship makes an aeronaut suffer the same pain and 
pressure on his ear-drums that a diver knows, only 
now the air presses from inside the head outward. And 
relief from this pain is found, as the diver finds it, by 
repeatedly opening the mouth and swallowing. 



THE BALLOONIST 



93 



And he spoke of the strangest illusions of sight. 
The balloon is always standing still to the person in it, 




PROFESSOR MYERS IN HIS "SKYCYCLE. 1 



while the earth rushes madly along, forty, sixty, ninety 
miles an hour. As you shoot up the first half mile the 
ground beneath you seems to drop away into a deep- 
ening bowl, while the horizon sweeps up like a loosened 



94 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

spring. Then presently this illusion passes, and you 
see everything flat. There are no hills any more, nor 
villages; no towers nor steep descents, only a level sur- 
face, marked charmingly in color, sometimes in won- 
derful mosaics, and strangely in light and shade. At 
the height" of two miles nothing is familiar; you might 
as well be looking at the moon, for all you can recog- 
nize. Roads become yellowish lines ; rivers brownish 
lines (and the water vanishes) ; a mountain-range be- 
comes a shaded strip, with less shade on one edge 
(where the sun is) than on the other; a forest becomes 
a patch of color; a town another patch. There is 
scarcely any difference between water and land, and 
you see to the bottom of a lake, so that the configura- 
tion of its bed in valley and hill are apparent through 
the color and the shading. This singular disappear- 
ance of water bodies, for it amounts to almost that, has 
an evident importance. 

"I '11 tell you what we did on Lake Ontario," said 
the professor, "as a result of observations I made there 
from a balloon. In sailing over the lake on one occa- 
sion I remarked a number of small shaded spots which 
puzzled me. I could, not imagine what they were. 
Finally, with the help of powerful field-glasses, I made 
them out to be wrecks sunk at various depths, and I 
realized that Lake" Ontario, and indeed all the great 
lakes, abound in vessels which have gone down during 
centuries and never been recovered. No one can esti- 
mate the treasure which lies there waiting for some 
one to reclaim it. And I saw that it is a perfectly simple 
matter to locate these wrecks from a balloon, and to 
prove this I organized a modest wrecking expedition, 
and indicated to the diver where he was to go down. 
Down he went at that point, and found the wreck I 
had seen, and we pumped good coal out of her by hun- 



THE BALLOONIST 95 

dreds of tons. What I did then on a small scale might 
be done on a large scale by any one willing to under- 
take it." 

Of course I asked the professor why it is that an 
aeronaut can see down into a lake better than, say, 
an observer in a boat, and he explained that there is a 
great gain in intensity of terrestrial illumination when 
the viewpoint is at a height, because the sun's rays con- 
verge toward the earth, the sun being so many times 
larger, and therefore (this is his theory) a man lifted 
above the earth gets many more solar rays reflected to 
him from a given area than he would get if nearer to 
that area. In a word, it is a matter of optics and 
angles, but, the professor declares, most assuredly a 
fact. 

Never before these talks did I realize how busy an 
aeronaut is, how much there is to do in a balloon. 
Besides attending to valve-cords and ballast there is the 
barometer to keep your eyes on, for by it alone can you 
know your altitude. Around moves the needle slowly 
as you rise, slowly as you fall, one point for a thousand 
feet. Rising' or falling, you know the worst or the 
best there. Sometimes the needle sticks, the barometer 
will not work, and you must cast overside pieces of tis- 
sue-paper to see by their rise or fall if you are going up 
or down. By your senses alone you cannot tell whether 
you are rising or falling, or your distance from the 
earth. That is most deceiving. Then you must have 
your watch ready to reckon your speed, so many thou- 
sand feet up or down in so many seconds, and your 
map spread out (nailed to a board, and that lashed 
fast), to tell where you are, and your compass out to 
fix the north and south points, for a balloon twists 
slowly all the time, twists one way going up and the 
other way coming down. Nobody knows just why 




o ft 

o ■-• 



THE BALLOONIST 97 

this is, unless it be the unequal drawing of the seams 
as the fabric swells and shrinks. 

"I always keep the mouth of my balloon within easy 
reach," said the professor, "and play with it as an en- 
gineer does with his throttle-valve. Sometimes I even 
tie it shut when I am sailing, but that is dangerous." 

"Why dangerous?" 

"Because the balloon might ascend suddenly, and the 
expanding gas burst it." 

"Can you see up into the balloon," I asked, "through 
the mouth ?" 

"Of course you can, and a beautiful sight it is. You 
look up through a round window, twenty inches or so 
in diameter, into the great bag, swelled out fifty or sixty 
feet in diameter, and perfectly tight, so that every line 
and veining of the net shows plainly through the silk in 
exquisite tracery, and wherever the sun strikes it you 
see a spread of gold and amber melting away in chang- 
ing colors to the shaded parts. The balloon seems to 
be perfectly empty, perfectly still, yet it swings you 
upward and upward like a live thing. You get to feel 
that your balloon is alive." 

"Does it make any noise?" 

"Usually not. Now and then there is a creaking of 
the basket or a rustle of fabric, as you pass from one 
wind current to another, but as you drift along there 
is perfect stillness. I know nothing like the peace of a 
balloon sweeping in a storm. You feel like a disem- 
bodied spirit. You have no weight, no bonds; you 
fly faster than the swiftest express train. More than 
once Carlotta has raced a train going fifty miles an hour 
and beaten it." 

"Is there danger to a balloon in a thunderstorm?" 

"Apparently not, but it is terrifying to be in one. 
You seem to be at the very point where the lightning 
7 



98 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

starts and the thunder-crash is born. All about you are 
roarings and blinding flashes, and it rains up on you and 
down on you, and in on you from all sides. While I 
never heard of a free balloon being struck by lightning, 
it is a common thing for operators on the ground even 
in fair weather to get shocks of atmospheric electricity 
down the anchor ropes of captive balloons." 

Our talk drifted on, and the professor told of excit- 
ing times reporting the great yacht races from captive 
balloons (with reporters turning seasick in the plung- 
ing basket), and remarkable phenomena observed from 
balloons and double colored shadows of balloons (called 
parhelions) cast on clouds, and wonderful light effects, 
as when a marveling aeronaut looks down upon a sea 
of silver clouds bathed in sunshine and through black 
clefts sees a snowstorm raging underneath. 

I was surprised to learn that at very great altitudes, 
say above three miles, the voice almost fails to serve, 
or, rather, the rarefied air loses in great part its power 
of voice transmission, so that in the vast silent spaces 
of the sky one aeronaut must literally shout to another 
in the same basket to make himself heard. One would 
say that the great; cajm heavens resent the chattering 
intrusion of noisy little men. 



II 



WHICH TREATS OF EXPERIMENTS IN STEERING 
BALLOONS 

IN all their experiments at the farm. Professor Myers 
and Mine. Carlotta have worked on individual lines, 
he striving of late years to perfect his skycycle (which 
is simply a balloon of torpedo shape with a rigging of 
propellers and fans underneath), while she has been 
content to gain skill in steering a balloon of ordinary 
shape by merely moving her body and utilizing vary- 
ing air-currents, for the wind blows in different direc- 
tions as you ascend. 

It is remarkable how the position of an aeronaut's 
body may alter a balloon's movements. It is possible, 
for instance, to make a balloon ascend or descend, with- 
out touching valve or ballast, by a simple change of 
position. Stand with your legs apart, straddling from 
edge to edge of the basket, and by throwing your 
weight first on one foot and then on the other you will 
give a polliwog movement to the big bag above you, 
and it will go wriggling upward head-first some hun- 
dreds of feet. Or if you would make it descend (all 
this the professor explained to me), stand with your 
feet together in the middle of the basket, and, catching 
the balloon-neck at both sides, stretch your arms wide 
apart so that the fabric forms a chisel-edge, then sway 
your hips forward as far as you can, then back as far 
as you can, and keep doing this. Now the wriggling 

99 

L.ofC. 



ioo CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

process is reversed ; and this time the basket goes first, 
"tail wagging the dog," and the balloon descends. 




MME. CARLOTTA STEERING A BALLOON BY TIPPING THE 
FOOT-BOARD. 



This ability to rise or fall at will allows Mme. Car- 
lotta to pass easily from one train of clouds to another, 
and, by long study of these cross-moving aerial trains, 



THE BALLOONIST 101 

she is able to pick out the one she wants for a certain 
destination with almost the precision of a foot-passen- 
ger selecting his particular street-car or changing from 
one to another. And in descending she has learned to 
steer forward or back, to left or right, by tipping the 
basket foot-board in the direction she wishes to take. 
The balloon follows the lowest edge of the foot-board 
as a ship follows her rudder. 

An almost incredible instance of the skill attained 
by Carlotta in these experiments was furnished some 
dozen years ago at Ottawa, where she made an ascen- 
sion never forgotten by the people of that city. It 
was a grand occasion in honor of Queen Victoria's 
gift of the Crystal Palace to her loyal subjects, and 
Canada had rarely seen such a gathering. Twenty- 
five thousand people, as was estimated, were packed 
inside the Exposition grounds to see the aeronaut rise 
to the clouds. And there at the appointed time stood 
Carlotta on a raised platform, with the multitude about 
her, waiting for the balloon. She wore a short skirt 
over a gymnasium suit, and made an attractive pic- 
ture with her fine figure and golden-bronze hair. So 
thought various city dignitaries, who chatted with her 
admiringly while the crowd surged about them. 

Meantime Professor Myers was anxiously watching 
the manceuvers of some Indians hired by a committee 
to tow the balloon from gas-works two miles distant, 
where it had been filled. This was rather against the 
professor's judgment, for the Rideau River, flowing by 
the grounds, offered an obstacle that could be overcome 
only with the help of canoes and tow-lines ; and to pad- 
dle a big balloon across a river, a fresh-filled, hard-tug- 
ging balloon, is not a thing to be undertaken lightly. 
And in spite of all their skill these Indians found them- 
selves presently lifted into the air, canoes and all (oh, 



102 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

they were badly frightened Indians!), not quite clear 
of the water, but high enough to make it doubtful if 
they would ever reach shore, and highly interesting to 
the crowd which pressed down to the river, even into 
the river, in well-meant efforts to help, and dragged the 
balloon up the bank and along toward the platform 
with such eagerness that they tore great rents in it 
that let out the gas in volumes. 

In an instant, as happens in crowds, the balloon be- 
came the center of a struggling mass of people, who 
slowly pressed in from all sides to see what the matter 
was. Now, when twenty-five thousand people are all 
pressing slowly toward one point, it is apt to fare ill 
with those at that point ; and had not Carlotta acted on 
a flash of inspiration there would surely have been dis- 
aster in that merciless crush. She looked over the 
shouting, swaying multitude, and in a second saw T the 
danger — -saw women held helpless and fainting in that 
jam of bodies ; saw one way, and only one, to save the 
situation, and took that way. Stepping off" the plat- 
form, she ran lightly and swiftly over heads and shoul- 
ders, packed solid, and came to the balloon. Such was 
the people's fright that they scarcely felt her pass. 

"You can't go up," cried her husband; "the balloon 
is a wreck." 

"I must go up," she answered; "if I don't these peo- 
ple will be crushed to death." 

"There 's a hole in her big enough to drive a team 
through," he protested; but already she was in the 
basket, and a great cheer arose. 

"It 's better to risk one life than many," she an- 
swered with decision, and, turning to the crowd, mo- 
tioned them to loose the car. In their wonder the mad 
multitude forgot their fear, and the struggling quieted. 
All eyes were now on the balloon; one woman's cour- 




"IN SPITE OF ALL THEIR SKILL THESE INDIANS FOUND THEMSELVES PRESENTLY 
LIFTED INTO THE AIR, CANOES AND ALL." 



104 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

age had quelled the panic. The danger to the crowd 
was past, to the woman just beginning. 

"Wait a moment," shouted Professor Myers; "you 
must have more ballast." But in the din of voices she 
misunderstood him and cast out the last bag. Then, 
with a great heave and a flapping of its torn sides, the 
balloon wrenched itself free and shot upward, a cripple 
soaring with its last strength. Up and up it went, 
higher and higher as the small store of gas expanded. 
That tattered balloon, with its seams gaping open, 
raised itself somehow two miles over the city of Ot- 
tawa, and then almost immediately began to fall. The 
gas stayed in just long enough to lift the broken bag, 
and then left it to dash downward. Professor Myers, 
heart-sick on the ground, turned his eyes away, sure 
that he had seen his wife alive for the last time. 

But Carlotta was of no such mind. She had saved 
the crowd, now she would save herself ; and even as the 
balloon dropped with frightful speed, she put her plan 
into action. Swinging herself up on the netting, she 
caught the flapping silk above a long tear, and drew it 
down with all her weight until it reached the car. In- 
stantly the air rushed in underneath, and bellied out the 
fabric into a great umbrella, a parachute improvised 
from a ripped balloon. Now they were slowing up ; 
they had put the brakes on, and now they were soaring 
easily, drifting with the wind. Carlotta drew a long 
breath of relief and looked down. They w r ere still a 
mile above ground. She had the runaway in hand, but 
where should she land him? Most aeronauts would 
have been thankful enough to get down alive anywhere ; 
she proposed to do a feat of steering as well. No 
doubt there was some gas in the upper part of the bag 
to help her, but in the main she was guiding a para- 
chute; and she guided it so skilfully by tipping the foot- 



THE BALLOONIST 105 

board forward or back, to left or right, that she landed 
finally in a clump of evergreen-trees, some fifteen miles 
from Ottawa, that she had selected as the very place 
she proposed to land. And great were the rejoicings 
when it was known that she had come to no harm. 

The story had an interesting sequel the following 
year, when Carlotta made another ascension from the 
same place. 

"Where will you land this time?" one of the com- 
mittee asked her. 

Carlotta looked at the clouds a moment, then, smil- 
ing, said, "If you like, I will land exactly where I did 
last year." 

This they all declared impossible, for the wind was 
strong in just the opposite direction; but Carlotta in- 
sisted she would land in that clump of evergreens and 
nowhere else. And she kept her word. She had ob- 
served that at a certain height the wind was favorable 
to her purpose, and by the same tactics of seeking the 
right wind-currents and by the same clever foot-board 
tipping she reached the point she was steering for, to 
the general wonder and admiration. 

My acquaintance with Professor Myers has given me 
some light on a question often in my mind ; that is, 
what kind of children these men have who follow ca- 
reers of danger and daring. Will the son of a steeple- 
climber climb steeples? Will the daughter of a lion- 
tamer be afraid of a mouse? And so on. Of course, 
with both father and mother aeronauts, as in this case, 
it would be strange indeed if their child did not love 
balloons ; and so it has turned out, for Miss Aerial 
Myers, now a girl in her teens, has already made vari- 
ous ascensions, and enjoys nothing better than soaring 
aloft on her father's skycycle, which she steers skil- 
fully. Her first experience of a voyage in the air is 



106 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

memorable for two facts, that it nearly brought destruc- 
tion to herself and her mother, and drew attention to 
an important but little-known fact in ballooning science. 

It was some years ago, at the Syracuse County Fair, 
and a balloon race had been advertised between Carlotta 
and young Tysdell, an assistant of Professor Myers. 
For this event an enormous crowd had gathered on the 
grounds. And now (by what tears and pleadings who 
can say?) Miss Aerial, aged eleven, had persuaded her 
too fond mother to take her along, and off they went, 
amid cheers and wavings, with a strong breeze blowing, 
and the child peering down at the dwindling earth over 
the basket-side. She watched the roads change into 
yellow streaks, and the hills swing up from back of the 
horizon, and the clouds spread away below them like a 
sea. She watched her mother take readings of compass 
and barometer, and as the wind swept them along to 
new view-points she would cry out, "Here comes an- 
other town, mama !" and clap her hands as the town 
raced by. 

Tysdell won the race, having ballast in plenty to 
throw out, while Carlotta had little, since the extra 
lifting-power of her balloon was needed for Miss 
Aerial. Now, the difficulty of managing a balloon is 
much increased if you have no ballast, for then you 
cannot rise at will to enter a higher wind-current blow- 
ing the way you want to go, but must drift where the 
current you are in may take you. And the current they 
were in took them (such is the perversity of things) 
straight toward a deep and dangerous lake. Carlotta 
saw where they were going, but was powerless to pre- 
vent it. She could not throw Miss Aerial overboard 
like a sand-bag to make the balloon go higher, although 
she did throw overboard everything else that was mov- 
able, even to her jacket and shoes. Then, having done 




MME. CARLOTTA CALLS FOR ASSISTANCE FROM ANOTHER BALLOONIST 
THREE MILES AWAY. 



108 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

all that was possible, she waited, clutching the basket- 
sides with anxious fingers, and wondering if there was 
any way to safety. 

Suddenly an idea came to her, and she scanned the 
heavens for Tysdell's balloon. No sight of it any- 
where. Tysdell was three miles away, hidden by 
clouds. Nevertheless she lifted her voice and sent 
forth a loud cry, calling his name. Immediately the 
answer came, quite distinct. She explained their peril, 
and asked Tysdell if he could come to them. He said 
he would try, and questioned her where they were and 
what wind-currents had borne them. Carlotta told 
Tysdell to what height he must drop (she knew her 
own height by the barometer), and in a very few min- 
utes, being able to rise and fall as he pleased, he was 
near the two other air-sailors, and got his balloon 
down by the lake-side in time to help them ashore when 
they struck, as presently they did. The basket splashed 
the water, then skipped along the surface under the 
drag of the balloon, and was caught finally in the arms 
of a tree that reached out from the bank. And the 
only harm done was the spoiling of Miss Aerial's best 
frock ! 

Here was a case of conversation carried on easily be- 
tween two balloons a mile or so above the earth and 
three miles apart. But other experiments made by 
Mine. Carlotta show that talking between balloons may 
go on over much greater distances, a reach of nearly 
eight miles having been accomplished on one occasion 
near Ogdensburg, New York. The explanation of this 
phenomenon is perfectly simple. Each balloon, while 
it is speaking, acts as a huge megaphone for the other, 
and each balloon, while it is listening, acts as a huge 
sounding-board for the other; and the tighter the bal- 
loons are kept under pressure of gas, the easier it is to 



THE BALLOONIST 109 

make these great silken horns (for such they are) 
throw forth and receive the messages. It should be 
noted that this facility for voice transmission does not 
exist at great heights because of the rarefied air. At 
a mile above earth, however, this difficulty is not pre- 
sented, and it may be that a superior kind of wireless 
telegraphy will be introduced some clay by the use of 
talking balloons. Why not ? 



II] 



SOMETHING ABOUT EXPLOSIVE BALLOONS AND 
THE WONDERS OF HYDROGEN 

ONE day the professor told me about some rainfall 
experiments with balloons that he conducted years 
ago for the government. There was a theory to be 
tested that loud explosions at a height will make the 
clouds pour down water, and some gentlemen in the 
Department of Agriculture were anxious to set off as 
loud an explosion as possible, say a thousand feet up 
in the air. Professor Myers received this commission, 
and proceeded at once to Washington with a gas-bal- 
loon twelve feet in diameter. 

"Don't you think that balloon is rather small ?" asked 
one of the gentlemen. 

"No," said Myers; "I should call it rather large." 

The other man shook his head. "I 'm afraid it won't 
make noise enough to test our theory." 

"Well," said the professor (I can see his eyes twin- 
kling), "if this balloon does n't make noise enough 
we '11 get a bigger one." 

They took the balloon some miles out of Washington 
(the professor insisted on this), filled it with a ter- 
ribly explosive mixture of oxygen and hydrogen, and 
sent it up about a quarter of a mile, with an anchor- 
rope holding it and a wire hanging down to a little 
hand-dynamo or blasting-machine. As they made 
ready to turn this dynamo, Professor Myers lay flat 



THE BALLOONIST in 

on his back, eyes glued to the balloon, confident but 
curious. The handle turned, a spark jumped at the 
other end, and the ball of silk seemed to swell enor- 
mously and then vanish with a flash of a thousand 
shivers of silk. On this came the sound — a smashing 
and tearing blast louder than any thunder-crash or roar 
of cannon. It flattened men to the ground, killed hun- 
dreds of little fish in a stream near by (bursting their 
air-bladders), knocked over a bowling-alley like a house 
of cards, frightened cattle, and brought clown rain in 
torrents within eight minutes. The Agricultural gen- 
tlemen were more than satisfied, and adopted the pro- 
fessor's system for extended rainfall experiments — 
only these (for obvious reasons) were removed to the 
lonely and arid plains of distant Texas. 

"It was n't much fun living down there," said the 
professor; "but we got rain whenever we wanted it." 

"What would happen," I inquired, "if a very large 
balloon filled with this explosive mixture were set off 
over a crowded city?" 

The professor shook his head in his awed contempla- 
tion of this possibility. "It would work fearful de- 
struction. If large enough (and there is no difficulty 
in obtaining such a size), it would wipe out of existence 
whole blocks of houses and the people in them. It 
would destroy an army." 

In the course of our talks I discovered a mystic side, 
very unexpected, in the professor's nature. He used to 
speak of hydrogen, for instance, with a certain almost 
reverence, as if it were something endowed with life 
and consciousness, a powerful spirit, one would say, not 
merely a commonplace product of chemistry, a gas from 
a retort. 

"I have often wondered," he said one day, "as my 
basket has swept me along, what there is in this silken 



THE BALLOONIST 113 

bag above me that lifts me thus over mountains and 
cities. I look up into the balloon through the open 
mouth, and I see nothing ; I hear nothing ; I smell noth- 
ing. None of my senses answer any call ; yet some- 
how, strangely, in a way I can't explain, I perceive a 
presence. It would not be at all the same to me were 
the balloon filled with air, though it would be the same 
to all my senses. Again and again I have noted this 
thing, that hydrogen makes itself known to men when 
they are near it." , 

He paused a moment as if to observe my attitude, 
to see if it were one of scoffing. I made no remark, but 
begged him to go on. 

"After all," he continued, "even the books allow to 
hydrogen properties that are very amazing. It is the 
lightest of all things ; it passes through and beyond all 
things ; it is the nearest approach we know of to abso- 
lute nothing. Who can say that it is not related to the 
land of nothing, to — " He hesitated. 

"You mean?" said I. 

"I don't know what I mean. I only wonder. Take 
this case that happened at Ogdensburg, New York, 
during an ascension we made there. We had filled the 
balloon with hydrogen, and were just ready to start 
when the valve-cords that hang down inside the bag 
from the valve at the top became twisted and drew up 
out of reach from the basket. In vain I tried to get 
them free by poking at them with sticks and long- 
handled things; the cords would not come down, and 
of course no sane man would make an ascension with 
his balloon-valve beyond control. There was nothing 
for it but to get inside that great gas-bag and undo the 
tangle with my hands. So I called fifteen or twenty 
men to catch hold of the netting and pull the strug- 
gling balloon down over me until I could reach the 
cords. Then I — " 



ii4 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

"Wait a minute," I interrupted. "Were you stand- 
ing inside the balloon so that you had to breathe hy- 
drogen?" 

The professor smiled. "I stood inside the balloon, 
but I breathed nothing; I held my breath, which is 
one of the things I have practised. Before I went in- 
side I told my wife to note the time by her watch, and 
if I did not come out before one hundred and twenty 
seconds had passed to have the men drag me out. You 
see, I knew I could hold my breath one hundred and 
twenty seconds, but no longer. 

"Well, we carried out the plan, and I freed the cords 
in less than my limit of time ; then came the uncanny 
part of it — at least, it seemed so to me. I had read 
that hydrogen will not transmit sound, but had never 
tested it. It is true I had at various times taken hydro- 
gen into my lungs, but never had I tried to speak in 
hydrogen. Now was my chance, and, with all my re- 
maining breath I shouted as loud as I could inside that 
balloon. Think of it ; there were my wife and the men 
a few feet distant, with only the thinnest tissue of 
silk between us, and a gas that was like nothing. Yet 
my cry, that would have reached perhaps half a mile 
in air, could not penetrate that little void. To those 
outside the balloon it was as if I had not opened my 
lips. They heard nothing, not even a whisper. I be- 
lieve you might fire a cannon inside a bag of hydrogen, 
and no faintest rustle of the discharge would reach 
your ears. So, you see, a world of hydrogen would be 
a voiceless world." 

"Did you say you have breathed hydrogen?" I asked. 

"Yes ; I have breathed it up to the danger-point. I 
know all the sensations. There is first a mild exhila- 
ration, then a sense of sickening and head-throbbing, 
and finally a delicious languor that leads into stupor. 



THE BALLOONIST 115 

When you get there it is time to stop. In making- 
ascensions we have to be very careful not to breathe 
too much gas from the balloon-neck which hangs open 
over the basket. More than one aeronaut has been 
gradually overcome without realizing that he was in 
danger." 

The professor went on to tell of other singular things 
about this subtle gas, notably that, speaking within 
limits, the higher you want a balloon to rise, the less 
hydrogen you must put in it. If you fill a balloon full 
of hydrogen it will rise to no great height (and is very 
apt to burst), since the gas has no space to expand in, 
and the way to keep a balloon rising is to make it ex- 
pand more and more as it goes up, each foot of added 
volume displacing a foot of the air-ocean and to that 
extent adding buoyancy. 

"General Hazen and I," said the professor, "once 
planned that some day, when we got an appropriation, 
we would go up in a balloon having a capacity of, say, 
forty thousand cubic feet, but carrying at the ground 
only ten thousand cubic feet of hydrogen — in other 
words, in a shrunken, quarter-filled balloon. Of course 
as we rose and the air became rarefied this hydrogen 
would expand against the decreasing air-pressure, and 
at a height of two miles our original ten thousand feet 
of gas might have swelled to twenty thousand feet, at 
five miles to thirty thousand feet, and so on. The last 
ten thousand feet of expansion would have brought us 
to no one knows what height, but certainly, we calcu- 
lated, to the greatest height ever reached by a bal- 
loonist." 

He explained that the balloon record of seven miles 
claimed for Glaischer and Coxwell, the English aero- 
nauts, is not reliable, since the barometer used in that 
famous ascension (it was made at Wolverhampton, 



u6 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

England, in 1862) could not register above five miles, 
and what was accomplished beyond that height is mat- 
ter of pure conjecture and must be less than might be 
done by the Hazen-Myers plan, since Glaischer's bal- 
loon (by a serious oversight) was started on its flight 
nearly full of hydrogen, instead of nearly empty. 

"Oh," exclaimed the professor, with regretful look, 
"why don't some of our very rich men think of these 
things !" 



IV 



THE STORY OF A BOY WHO RAN AWAY IN A 
BIG BALLOON 

ONE of the professor's hobbies is that gas-balloons 
are better and safer than the hot-air kind, although 
the latter cost less to operate. Your hot-air balloon 
goes up with a rush, but comes down again as soon 
as it cools ; and in the coming down lies the danger. A 
gas-balloon, on the other hand, stays up as long as you 
keep gas in it, and the professor's secret of varnishing 
holds gas like a trap. 

As to the ordinary use of hot-air balloons for para- 
chute dropping, the professor has only condemnation. 
A parachute, says he, is a sin and a disgrace — a thing 
to be prohibited by law. The parachute kills more peo- 
ple every year (the professor still is talking) than many 
a battle, and kills them in unpleasant ways : drops them 
on live electric wires, which shock them to death; 
drops them in lakes, where they are drowned, or in the 
ocean, where they are eaten by sharks; drops them in 
trees, where they catch by their coat-collars and choke 
to death; drops them on sharp railings, which spear 
them through ; drops them— but the professor's list 
(backed by statistics, be it said) is too long and grue- 
some. It is only fair to add that I have a friend, Leo 
Stevens, a professional aeronaut, who has made thou- 

117 



n8 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

sands of drops from hot-air balloons and claims that 
nothing is safer than a parachute, and says he can steer 
one in its downward sailing so as to avoid dangerous 
landing-places, although he does admit numerous hair- 
breadth escapes, as when he dropped from a parachute 
two miles out at sea, this at Long Branch in 1898, and 
was only saved by his life-preserver and the courage 
of some fishermen, or again when De Ive, his partner 
in ballooning ventures, dropped with him on one occa- 
sion from a big balloon (one parachute was suspended 
on either side), and landed in Lake Canandaigua and 
was drowned. "Oh, there 's no doubt a man takes 
chances on a parachute," said Stevens, "but I like it." 

There is a singular thing about parachutes, Stevens 
contends, not sufficiently considered by Professor 
Myers in his' experiments. The professor, with his 
usual thoroughness, has tested all shapes and kinds of 
parachutes by dropping them from a captive balloon 
with a sand-bag hitched on instead of a man. The 
dropping was done by a fuse which would burn the 
supporting rope and at a given moment set the para- 
chute free, just as a man under the parachute would 
cut it free. And in a large number of cases the para- 
chute did not open in time to save the sand-bag man 
from destruction on the ground. 

"That proves," argues the professor, "that para- 
chutes are extremely dangerous." 

"Nothing of the sort," answers Leo Stevens ; "it only 
proves that there is a big difference between a sand-bag 
man and a real man. The sand-bag is dead weight, 
and the man is live weight. A parachute will open 
for the one where it won't open for the other." 

"Why will it," queries the professor, "if the man and 
the sand-bag weigh the same?" 

"I don't know why, but it will," Stevens insists. 



120 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

"If what you say were true I 'd be dead long ago, and 
my wife, and all my assistants." 

I well remember my first visit to aeronaut Stevens 
at his little balloon establishment on Third Avenue, a 
rambling', go-as-you-please attic, with things strewn 
about anyhow, lengths of balloon-cloth hanging from 
rafters for the varnish to dry, crinkly yellow segments 
of balloons heaped near a' sewing-machine that was 
stitching them into spheres, rows of hot-air balloons 
from past seasons ranged along on shelves in tight 
bundles, models of flying-machines, all kinds of para- 
chutes, including one in red, white, and blue, made to 
take up a dog, and in various dusty corners photo- 
graphs of Leo Stevens walking a tight rope, Leo Ste- 
vens rising to the clouds over waving multitudes, Leo 
Stevens (and his big umbrella) soaring down to earth 
from the height of twenty steeples, swinging with 
dancing-master grace from the bar of his trapeze. I 
liked this place for the good-natured faces of "Kid" 
Benjamin, who was scooping cold salmon out of a can 
when I came in, and a young lady with, long eyelashes, 
who was running the machine. 

Leo Stevens was out, said this young lady; he was 
seeing some patent lawyers about his new air-ship, but 
she was Mrs. Stevens, and could she do anything for 
me? I asked various questions, and she answered 
them from a wide practical knowledge. She had made 
dozens of balloons and parachutes — yes, and used them, 
too. It was "Kid" Benjamin who offered this latter in- 
formation, remarking that she was "grand on a para- 
chute." 

Mrs. Stevens smiled, and explained that she had 
never made an ascension in her life until the previous 
summer, and then only because her husband was in a 
fix through the failure of another woman to appear. A 



THE BALLOONIST 121 

balloon race had been advertised between two lady 
aeronauts, and when the time came one of them, Miss 
Nina Madison, was missing. Rather than have the 
thing a failure and a big crowd disappointed, Mrs. 
Stevens agreed to go up. She would take Miss Nina's 
place and race the professional. And she did it, and 
she won the race. 

"You see," she said, "I did n't feel nervous as an- 
other woman might, because I 'd been living with bal- 
loons for years. Besides they hitched me fast to the 
parachute ropes so I could n't have fallen if I 'd wanted 
to. It was lovely going up ; everybody said we made a 
beautiful ascension, and the two balloons kept so close 
together that the other lady and I were talking all the 
way. At last, when we were up about three thousand 
feet, she called out that my balloon was settling and 
for me to cut. But I called back: 'Cut yourself,' and, 
sure enough, she did in a minute, and I watched her 
parachute open out and sink and get smaller and 
smaller, until she reached the ground. A few minutes 
later, when I saw my balloon had really settled, I cut, 
too. H-o-0-0, what a sensation ! You know those 
awful. dreams where you fall and fall? Well, it 's just 
like that for two or three seconds, until your para- 
chute fills wide and springs you up against the ropes. 
Then you sail down, down, with a lovely eas}< r mo- 
tion until you get close to the ground. But look 
out for the landing. Once I struck in a treetop. 
And you 're liable to come down on houses or any- 
thing." 

"You 're liable to come down in the middle of a 
lake," put in "Kid" Benjamin. 

"Do you go up?" said I to the "Kid," whose hands 
and face showed black smears from painting balloon- 
cloth. He was certainly not over eighteen. 



122 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

"Do I ?" he answered, with a grin. "I made more 'n 
twenty ascensions and drops last summer." 

"He 's the one," said Mrs. Stevens, "who carried 
that boy up hanging from the parachute ropes. Don't 
you remember? At Coney Island? The boy was 
helping hold the balloon, and when she started his foot 
got caught." 

"And he went up hanging by his foot?" 

The "Kid" nodded. "Yep, stuck fast in the rigging 
by one shoe. As I sat on the trapeze bar there was 
that boy forty feet above me kicking and yelling. Say, 
you 'd never guess what he was yelling about." 

"I suppose he was afraid?" 

The "Kid" shook his head. "No, sir; he did n't 
seem to mind the eight hundred feet we 'd gone up, not 
a bit. What worried him was sixty cents in pennies 
and nickels that had spilled out of his pants pockets 
while he was upside down." 

Then the "Kid" explained how he postponed his 
parachute drop on this occasion and got down safely, 
boy and all, by letting the balloon cool off and gradu- 
ally settle to the ground. 

"Is n't a parachute pretty long when it hangs down?" 
I asked. 

"Certainly. It 's thirty-five feet from where she 
hitches on t' the balloon to where you sit on the bar. 
That 's length o' ropes and length o' cloth both." 

"Then, how can you cut her loose from 'way down 
on the bar?" 

"I '11 tell you," put in Mrs. Stevens. "You just 
pull a tape that hangs down inside the parachute from 
a cutaway-block at the parachute head. The holding- 
rope passes through that block, and there 's a knife- 
blade in the block over the rope. The tape pulls the 
knife-blade down, and away you go. It 's one of my 



THE BALLOONIST 123 

husband's inventions." She was plainly very proud of 
her husband. 

Presently entered Leo Stevens himself, a surpris- 
ingly young man for such a veteran, scarcely over 
thirty, the explanation being that he began ballooning 
as a mere child. Before he was ten he had gained 
some mastery of slack-wire feats, and at thirteen he 
was known over the country as Prince Leo, a marvel of 
the air, in black and gold, making the fortune of some 
gentlemen who exploited him. 

His arrival recalled the object of my visit, which was 
to get from him some practical ideas for balloon and 
parachute experiments on a small scale, the sort of 
thing boys might undertake in their own backyards ; 
and, on learning this, Stevens caught my idea at 
once. He knew just what I wanted, and was glad to 
help me. He liked boys himself, and we settled down 
forthwith to a consideration of segments and materials 
and dimensions and, after a little planning and meas- 
uring, he had the problem solved. 

"A hot-air balloon is the easiest and cheapest for 
boys to make," said Stevens, "and it goes up with more 
of a rush than a gas balloon. So we '11 tell them how 
to make a hot-air balloon. I remember a boys' bal- 
loon picnic that I got up one summer at Chautauqua 
Lake while I was making ascensions there. What fun 
those boys did have ! We sent up a kitten in a straw- 
berry basket, strapped fast, you know, so she could n't 
fall out, and the basket hung from the parachute by a 
time fuse that burned loose about a thousand feet up, 
and down came the whole thing, parachute, kitten, and 
all, sailing beautifully and landing as easily as you 
please. It never hurt the kitten at all. But the bal- 
loon drifted nearly a mile away across a swamp and 
stuck in a big tree. What a time those boys had chas- 



124 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

ing it and climbing after it and slopping home with it 
after dark through the swamp, with lanterns and 
torches ! I suppose they got well spanked, a good 
many of them, but boys don't mind." 
"How big was this balloon?" 

"About eleven feet high, inflated; that \s a good size. 
I mean eleven feet high inflated, but the segments must 
be cut out eighteen feet long to allow for the curve. 
See," and he made a sketch of a single segment. 
"There must be fourteen segments like 
this, each one eighteen feet long and two 
feet wide at the widest part, then taper- 
ing to a point at one end, the top, and to 
a width of five inches at the other end, 
the mouth, which must be left open. 
These segments are made from ordinary 
sheets of tissue paper, first pasted into 
long sheets (use ordinary starch paste) and 
then cut out after the pattern. Then the 
fourteen segments must be pasted together 
lengthwise along the edges, and they will 
form a balloon with enough lifting power 
to take up a parachute and small passenger, 
say a kitten or a puppy." 
"We must tell them how to fill this balloon with 
hot air," I suggested. 

"That 's so," said Stevens. "Well, it 's very simple. 
They must dig a trench, in the yard or somewhere, five 
feet long and one foot deep, with a hole dug at one end 
for a fire. Then they must cover over the trench with 
pieces of tin and spread dirt over that, and boards over 
all ; this is for a good draught. Then they must make 
a fire in the hole at one end of the trench out of barrel- 
staves or anything that will give a hot flame, and 
toward the last they might throw on a little kerosene. 



THE BALLOONIST 125 

That 's exactly the way we make our fires for big 
ascensions. 

"At the other end of the trench they must fix a length 
of stove-pipe sticking straight up out of the draught- 
bole into the mouth of the balloon and four or five boys 
must stand around on fences and boxes to hold the side 
of the balloon away from the fire which will shoot high 
above the chimney. Many a big hot-air balloon has 
been burned up that way on a windy day, and in our 
ascensions we have dozens of ropes sewn all over the 
balloon sides ; we call them wind guys, so that men 
can pull the cloth away from the fire while it 's filling. 
Say, talking about boys getting spanked, I must tell 
you a story." 

The story was from his own boyish experience — how 
he made his first trip to the clouds at the age of twelve, 
and set a whole city talking. This was the city of 
Cleveland, Ohio, where on a certain Sunday afternoon 
there was to be a balloon ascension at the great pleasure 
park. Young Stevens, of course, was present, wild 
with excitement, for balloons had been in his thoughts 
and dreams ever since he could remember. He pressed 
forward through the crowd and, with bulging eyes, 
watched the aeronaut arrange his barrels and pipes for 
the hydrogen-making, danced with delight as the great 
bag swelled and struggled, and finally was bitter in dis- 
appointment when the police appeared suddenly with 
orders to prevent the ascension, because the day was 
Sunday. 

Then, while the balloonist was protesting and plead- 
ing, Stevens formed his plan. He would go up him- 
self instead of the man. There was the balloon all 
ready, held by a single rope. There was the basket 
swinging impatiently, empty, and he more impatient 
than the basket. Quickly he turned to a boy who 



126 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

was with him. "Say, I '11 tell you what. You get 
a knife and cut that rope, and I '11 go up." But 
the boy demurred. Anyhow, he had no knife. So 
away dashed Stevens, and returned in a jiffy with a 
knife, taken from his father's shop. It was a sharp 
one. 

"There," panted the boy. "Now, cut her quick, soon 
as I climb in." 

The people about were so occupied with the par- 
ley growing warm between balloonist and police that 
few paid attention when a little shaver in knicker- 
bockers crept close to the basket and then slipped over 
its side. But the next minute nine thousand people 
paid considerable attention and shouted their surprise 
and delight as the eager balloon suddenly shot sky- 
ward, a small white face peering down and trying not 
to look frightened. The knife had done its work, and 
the subject of dispute, abruptly removed, was presently 
soaring half a mile above the city, drifting with the 
wind. 

Meantime little Leo, curled up at the bottom of the 
car, was saying over to himself a story he had read of 
two little babies who went up once in a balloon and 
sailed far, far away and never came back, but they 
might have come back if only they had been strong 
enough to pull a string that hung over them. Hello ! 
So there was a string to pull ! Well, any boy could 
pull a string. He was n't a baby. But where was the 
old string? He must look about and find it. And 
sure enough he did find it, only it turned out to be a 
stout rope, and he tugged at it valiantly until the valve 
opened and the balloon began to descend, just as the 
story-book said it would. And so occupied was Leo 
with keeping this valve open that he never once looked 
at the wide view spread beneath him, nor knew where 



THE BALLOONIST 127 

he was until he came bumping into a treetop, and found 
himself upset among the branches, which first tore his 
clothes to tatters and then dropped him into a muddy 
canal, whence he emerged a sadly battered and be- 
draggled aeronaut, yet happy. And even when his 
mother chastised him that evening with a ram-rod (his 
father being a gun-maker) he remained serene, for had 
he not gone up in a balloon, and was not the whole of 
Cleveland admiring him, and would he not go up again 
(he knew he would, despite all promises made under 
ram-rod stress) as soon as the chance presented? 

And within a year the chance did present, a bait of 
fifty dollars per ascension being offered the lad, and 
the outcome was he ran away from home, and saw no 
more of his family until years had passed and he had 
grown accustomed to dangers of the air and diamonds 
of value in his apparel. 

"Is n't it queer," said Stevens, talking it over, "how 
a fellow will stay away from his people when every- 
thing is all right, and get back to them through trou- 
ble? After I started in to be a balloonist I never saw 
my mother for seven years. Then I came once more 
to Cleveland to give an exhibition at the very park 
where I first went up- — they call it Forest City Park. 
I was to perform on a slack wire nine hundred feet 
long, stretched between two towers one hundred and 
fifty feet high. My wire was n't long enough to reach 
all the way, so they spliced on a length of three hun- 
dred feet more, and before I began my feats I walked 
back and forth over the wire to test it. I always do 
that. Then I walked to the middle of the wire and 
pretended to slip and fall — that 's a regular trick to 
startle the crowd. You let yourself drop suddenly, 
catch on the wire, and spring up again. Well, this 
time when I let myself drop I did n't spring up again, 



128 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

and I did n't know anything more for nineteen days, 
when I came to myself in the Huron Street Hospital. 
Somehow that splice in the wire had broken, and I 
went straight to the ground, breaking one arm, both 
wrists, and cracking my spinal column in four places. 
It 's a wonder I lived at all, they say, and during that 
hard time my mother came to me, as mothers do. Oh, 
she does n't love the balloon business, I can tell you. 
But I love it. I 've made over a thousand 
ascensions, and never been badly hurt but 
once." 

We were far away now from our balloon- 
making, and I reminded Stevens that we had 
still to tell the boys how to make a para- 
chute. 

"All right," said he; "here you are," and 
he gave me the following directions : "The 
parachute is made of fourteen segments of 
tissue paper, each one like this, measuring 
thirty-six inches long, six inches wide at 
the base, and tapering like the pattern 
up to a point. These segments must be 
pasted together lengthwise, the fourteen 
points joining at the top of the parachute, and in 
each one of the * fourteen side-seams a length of 
eighty inches of No. 8 thread must be pasted, leaving 
two inches sticking out at the top and about four feet 
hanging down below. The short ends at the top must 
be tied together, and these made fast to a piece of iron 
hoop pasted in the mouth of the balloon. Here the 
fuse must be placed and lighted just as the balloon is 
ready to start. A five-minute fuse will be long enough, 
and it must be so placed that when it has burned its 
time the parachute will fall from the balloon. The 
long ends below must be tied to a curtain ring, from 



THE BALLOONIST 129 

which the little basket hangs, with the kitten securely 
fastened in it by a piece of cloth pierced with four holes 
for the four legs. This can be brought up over the 
kitten's back and tied to the sides of the basket. In 
this way the kitten is in neither danger nor discomfort. 
The boys must be careful to make this plain to mothers 
and sisters, or their experiments may be stopped by 
family orders. I '11 guarantee one thing, though, if 
they carry out these instructions carefully, your boy 
friends will have a fine time." 
I certainly hope they will. 



THE PILOT 

i 

SOME STIRRING TALES OF THE SEA HEARD AT 
THE PILOTS' CLUB 

OF all the clubs in New York, I know none where 
a man who values the real things of life may 
spend a pleasanter hour than at the Pilots' Club, far 
clown on the lower water-front, looking out of lofty 
windows in one of those great structures that make the 
city, seen from the bay, a place of wonderful fairy 
towers. 

Here on the walls are pictures that call up thrilling 
scenes, as this painting of pilot-boat No. n (they call 
her The Phantom), rescuing passengers from the 
Oregon, helpless in the great storm of 1886, sixty 
miles beyond Sandy. Hook. We shall find men sitting 
about these rooms, smoking and reading, who can tell 
the story of that night in simple, rugged words that 
will make the water devils dance before us. 

Look at them ! These are the pilots of New York, 
greatest seaport in the world, with its tidy annual total 
of twenty-odd millions in tonnage entered and cleared, 
against fifteen millions for London. These are the 
boys (some of them nearing seventy) who bring the 
mighty liners in and take them out, who fight through 
any sea at a vessel's blue-light bidding, and climb her 
fortress sides by a slamming whip-lash ladder that 
shames the flying trapeze. And this in trim derby hat 

730 



THE OCEAN PILOT 131 

(sometimes a topper), with gloves and smart necktie, 
and some New- York "Heralds" tucked away in a coat- 
tail pocket. 

Look at them! These are the boys who stay out 
when every other floating thing comes in, who face an 
Arctic rigor when masts are barrel big with ice, and 
ropes like trees, and when climbing to a steamer's deck 
is like skating up an iceberg. These are the boys who 
know, through fog and darkness, the call of the whis- 
tling - buoy that sings at the mouth of Gedney's, and 
can say "Good morning" to every bobbing juniper-spar 
that marks the long ship lane (red lights on starboard 
buoys, as you come in, white lights on port buoys), who 
know the way even when the glass and iron lamp- 
frames are all but sunk with ice — west-northwest and a 
quarter west for a mile and a half, till the beacon lights 
of Waackaack and Point Comfort line out straight on 
the Jersey shore, then west by south until the Sandy 
Hook light lines with the old South Beacon, then a 
short way northwest by west and a quarter west until 
the Conover Beacon lines with Chapel Hill, and so on 
straight to the Narrows. 

These are the boys who know every rock and shoal 
in this most treacherous bay, with its thirteen light- 
houses, its two light-ships, and its eighty danger spots, 
marked by nun-buoys, bell-buoys, electric-light buoys, 
whistling buoys, all familiar to them as their own 
homes. 

Great boys they are for story-telling, these pilots, 
and by the hour I have listened to their memories of 
the sea. Two things made deep impression on me 
(so do we of less heroic lives take note of weakness in 
the strong) — one, that many pilots cannot swim (the 
same is true of deep-sea divers), the other, that pilots, 
even after years at sea, may be victims of seasickness 



132 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 




THE RESCUE OF THE OREGON S PASSEN3ERS. 



like any novice. Pilot Breed, for instance, as trusty 
a man as stands at a liner's wheel, assured me that 
every time he goes out for duty he goes out for torture, 
too. And he does his duty and he bears the torture, so 
that after all we must count this rather strength than 
weakness. 



THE OCEAN PILOT 133 

"How can you, do your work," I asked, "if you are 
in such distress ?" 

"Because T have to," he answered, with a wistful 
smile. "You know sailors are often seasick, but they 
go aloft just the same and work—because they have 
to. You could do it yourself if you had to. And 
yet," he added, half shutting his eyes, "I 've many a 
time been so bad when we 've tossed and tossed for 
days and nights on the watch for vessels that I 've come 
pretty near to dropping quietly overboard and end- 
ing it." 

This he said without any special emphasis, yet one 
could see that it was true. 

"Why don't you give up the life?" I suggested. 

"Perhaps I would," said he, "if I could do as well 
at anything else. Besides — " 

Then came the queerest reason. His father, it seems, 
a pilot before him, had suffered from seasickness for 
thirty-seven years, and then for thirty years more had 
been quite free from it. "Now," said Breed, "I 've 
been a pilot for twenty-two years, so I figure if I stick 
to it fifteen years more I may be like my father after 
that, and have no more trouble." 

Think of that for a scheme of life! 

Presently another pilot joined us, and set forth a 
remarkable experience. "I was taking the steamer 
Lahn once," said he, "through a heavy fog, and the 
captain and I were both on the bridge, anxious to locate 
the light-ship. You know she lies eight miles off the 
Hook, and gives incoming vessels their first bearings 
for the channel. Of course we did n't expect to see 
her light — you could n't see anything in such weather 
— but we listened for her fog-horn. How we did lis- 
ten ! And presently we heard it. You get accus- 
tomed to judging distances over water by the sound, 



134 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

and I put that light-ship at five miles away, or there- 
abouts, and I was n't far wrong. Well, we headed 
straight for it, and heard, the fog-horn all the time for 
about a mile. Then it suddenly stopped. 

"'Hullo!' said I. 'What 's up?' 

' 'Confound those light-ship people,' growled the 
captain. 'I '11 make complaint against them for stop- 
ping their horn.' 

" 'Wait a little,' said I, and kept listening, listening 
for the horn to blow again, and all the time we were 
running nearer to the shoal. Pretty soon we slowed 
down, and went on a couple of miles, then another mile. 
It seemed as if we must have reached the light-ship, 
and the captain was in a state of mind. 

"Then suddenly the fog-horn sounded again, not 
four lengths away, sir, and the queer thing is it had 
been sounding the whole blamed time — we got posi- 
tive proof of it afterward — only we had n't heard it. 
The explanation was that we had passed through two 
sound zones — that 's what the scientific people call 'em 
— and I can tell you those sound zones make consider- 
able trouble for pilots." 

To this perplexing statement the others nodded grave 
assent, and Breed capped the tale with a sound-zone 
story of his own. It was just off quarantine, and 
he was turning a liner to bring her up to dock when 
another liner came along, also running in. Breed 
gave the signal three times for the other liner to port 
her helm, and she signaled back three times for him to 
port his. By good luck each vessel did the right thing, 
and they passed safely, but neither pilot heard the 
whistle of the other, and each made angry complaint 
that the other had failed to whistle; yet witnesses tes- 
tified that both had whistled, and each one swore that 
he had. 



THE OCEAN PILOT 135 

The truth was, according to the gentlemen who ex- 
plain acoustic puzzles, that these two steamers hap- 
pened to be placed there down the bay like two people 
in a whispering gallery, who cannot hear each other 
where they are, but would hear plainly if they moved 
further apart or drew closer together, so as to be in 
the foci of sound. Thus it was that distant vessels 
heard both sets of whistles, although there was a nearer 
region where these were inaudible. 

Investigation has shown that these sound zones fre- 
quently establish themselves at sea (they vary in extent 
with wind and tide), so that the sound of horn or bell 
may be heard for a mile or two, and then become in- 
audible for, say, two miles, and then become audible 
again, almost as plainly as at first, for several miles 
more. The theory is that the sound-waves somehow 
go skipping over the sea, like a flat pebble over a mill- 
pond, in long jumps, and that a vessel under the high- 
est part of one of these jumps is out of the sound 
influence, but will come into it again by going ahead 
a certain distance or going back a certain distance. 
Whether this explanation be the true one or not, the 
facts are abundantly vouched for, and are believed to 
explain various collisions and wrecks that have long 
been looked upon as mysteries. 

"There are lots of queer things about our business," 
reflected an old pilot. "Now, you take steamers, 
they 're just as different as people; each one has her 
own ways, and most likely her own partic'lar kind of 
crankiness. They talk about twin steamers, but 
there 's no such thing. You can have 'em both made 
in the same yard, with every measurement alike, and 
they '11 be as different, sir, as — as two violins. Why, 
I never saw a craft that 'd sail the same on both tacks ; 
they 're always harder on one than the other. And as 



136 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

for compasses — well, I don't suppose there 's ever two 
that came into this port with needles pointing just the 
same way. They all lean a shade one way or the other, 
same as watches." 

"Lean a shade !" put in another man. "I 've known 
'em to lean a whole lot. I 've known a steamer's com- 
pass to point plumb northeast instead of north. And 
that time we nearly went on the rocks by it. We were 
coming along past Fire Island, and the night was pretty 
thick. I felt something was queer and would n't go 
below, although the captain wanted me to. I kept 
looking up, looking up, searching for the north star, 
and pretty soon I made it out, or thought I did, through 
a rift in the blackness. 

' 'Hold on !' said I to the captain, 'something 's the 
matter with your compass. There 's the north star 
ahead of us, and it ought to be abaft the bridge.' 

" 'North star nothing,' said the captain. 'You 're 
tired, man; you need a rest. Now, you just turn in 
for an hour, and I '11 run her.' 

" 'You '11 run her on the rocks,' said I, 'inside of 
fifteen minutes unless you pull her out of here. I tell 
you that compass is crazy.' 

"Well, sir, he began to get scared when he saw me 
so positive, and a little later he pulled her out — just in 
time, too, for we were right on the breakers of Long 
Island, thanks to that lying compass. I 've heard it 's 
the magnetic sand at Shinnecock that devils compasses. 
You know there 's acres and acres of it along there." 

This led to a discussion of magnetic sand, and it was 
edifying to see how well informed these pilots are in 
the latest advances of science. 

They set forth, for example, the clear advantage of . 
literally pouring oil upon furious waters, and were all 
agreed that the foam of a spent wave, spreading around 



THE OCEAN PILOT 137 

a life-boat, will often protect her against a succeeding 
wave. The foam seems to act like oil in preventing 
a driving wind from tossing up the surface — getting 
a hold on it, one might say. 

"Taking it altogether," I asked, "do you men regard 
a pilot's life as very dangerous?" 

It was Breed who answered : "Taking it altogether," 
said he, "I regard a pilot's life as about the most dan- 
gerous going. Here 's a little thing to show you how 
fast they go, these lives of pilots. When I was re- 
ceived as apprentice there were eighteen other appren- 
tices ahead of me, and the only way we could get to 
be pilots was through somebody dropping out, for 
there were never more than just so many licenses 
issued. Well, when I had been an apprentice for three 
years the whole eighteen had been received as pilots, 
and there were seven vacancies besides. That makes 
twenty-five dead pilots in three years, and most of 'em 
killed. Why, in the blizzard of 1888 alone ten of our 
boats were wrecked." 

At this there was a solemn shaking of heads, then 
stories of the taking off of this or that gallant fellow. 
There was Van Pelt, one of the strongest men i-n the 
service — a pilot from a family of pilots — killed by the 
stroke of a tow-line — a big hawser that snapped across 
his body like a knife when the towing-bitts pulled out, 
and cut him clean in two. 

Then there was that Norwegian apprentice, who was 
lost when they tried to send a small boat after Denny 
Reardon on the Massachusetts, in the storm of No- 
vember, 1897. The Massachusetts was loaded with 
lions, tigers, and elephants — the whole Barnum & 
Bailey show — and Reardon had just got her safely 
over the bar. There was a fierce sea on that night, 
and Reardon waited at the steamer's side — waited and 



138 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

peered out at the flare-up light, while the boys on the 
Nezv York tried to do the launching trick. And in 
one of the upsets this Norwegian chap was swept astern 
and churned to death in the screw-blades. 




A PILOT-BOAT RIDING OUT A STORM. 



Then there was Harry Devere, a Brooklyn pilot, 
who happened to be out in the cyclone of 1894, miles 
from land, in the little pilot-schooner, with its jaunty 
"17" on the canvas. There they were, riding out the 
storm, as pilot-boats do (facing it, not running), when 
up loomed a big West Indian fruiter, burning a blue 



THE OCEAN PILOT 139 

light forward, which meant she was in sore need of a 
man at the wheel who knew the dangers in these parts. 
The old ocean was killing mad that night, air and water 
straining in a death struggle, and already four pilots 
had been carried on by liners, carried on to Europe 
because there was no human way of putting them off. 

To start for that vessel now was madness, and every 
man in the pilot-crew knew it, and so did Devere. 
But he started just the same. He said he would try, 
and he did— tried through a cyclone that was sweeping 
a whole heaven of snow down upon the bellowing sea 
as if to smother its fury. Down into this they went, 
three of them, and somehow, by a miracle of skill, got 
the yawl under the vessel's lea. Then smash they were 
hurled against the iron side, and Devere sprang for 
the rope ladder — a poor, fluttering thing. He caught 
it, held fast, and the next moment was torn away by 
a great wave that cast him back into the waste of 
waters. And so he perished. 

You ought to hear them tell these stories ! 

On the whole it seemed clear there is danger enough 
in this calling for the most extravagant taste. And 
the chief danger is not this boarding of vessels in 
storms, nor yet the dancing out of tempests in cockle- 
shell craft, where a steamer would scurry to shelter; 
neither of these, but the everlasting peril of being run 
down. That is a danger to break men's nerves, for al- 
ways, night and day, the pilot-boats must lie in the 
swift track of the liners — right in the track, else they 
will pass unseen — and it must be known that this is a 
narrow track, a funnel for the ships of all the world, 
which pass ceaselessly, ceaselessly, converging from all 
ports, diverging to all ports, in storm, in fog, in dark- 
ness, and there the pilot-boats must lie, flying their 
square blue flags by day, burning their flare-up lights 



140 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

every fifteen minutes by night, waiting, waiting, in 
just such strained suspense as a man would feel before 
the rush of a silent locomotive, sure to kill him if he 
does not see it, before the rush of many silent locomo- 
tives which come while he sleeps, while he eats, perhaps 
while he prays. 

And constantly in the pilot records is this laconic 
entry: "No. 8 run over and sunk; all hands lost." 
"No. 1 1 run over and sunk ; one man saved, the rest 
lost." "Pilot-boat Columbia cut down by a liner; ten 
men lost." No chance for heroic struggle here, no 
death with dramatic setting; and columns in the papers, 
but a stupid, blundering execution while the men rest 
helpless on weary bunks, lulled by the surging sea — 
"run over and sunk." 



II 



WHICH SHOWS HOW PILOTS ON THE ST. LAW- 
RENCE FIGHT THE ICE-FLOES 

NO study of pilot life can be complete without men- 
tion of the river pilot who has to face perils in 
the rapids not a whit less real than those faced by 
his brother pilot on the sea. I got my first glimpse of 
the river pilot, oddly enough, in frozen December time, 
when even that great waterway of northern America — 
I mean the St. Lawrence — was all but a solid bed of ice, 
not quite, however, and to that chance I owed a glimpse 
of Canadian boatmen at the hazard of their winter 
work, which is none the less interesting for being un- 
familiar. » 

. It was fifteen degrees below zero, just pleasant 
Christmas weather in Quebec, and the old river of 
saintly fame was grinding along with its gorge of ice, 
streaming along under a dazzle of sun, steaming up 
little clouds of frozen water-vapor, low-hanging and 
spreading over it like tumbled fleece in patches of shine 
and shadow, quite a balloon effect, I fancied, as I came 
down the cliff. 

In a tug-boat office at the river's edge, chatting 
around a stove, yet bundled thickly as if no stove were 
there, I found some half dozen sharp-glancing men, 
who might have been actors in New York or noblemen 
in Russia (I judge by the fineness of their furs), but 
were pilots here, lower-river pilots who, as one of 

141 



142 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

them assured me, are vastly more important than the 
upper-river kind. 

I learned also from one who wore a coat of yellow- 
ish-gray skins with otter trimmings that they were a 
belated company, who would start shortly for Orleans 
Island across the ice. That was Orleans Island there 
to the left. No, it did not seem far, but I might find 
it far enough if I tried to get there. At this they all 
laughed. , 

Meekly I sat down, as was befitting, and listened to 
the talk. They conversed in bad French or worse 
English, and were most of them, strange to say, Scotch- 
men who had never seen Scotland and never would — 
Douglasses and Browns and McGregors, who could n't 
pronounce their own names, but could take a liner to 
the gulf, day or night, through the reefs of Crane 
Island, past the menacing twin Pilgrims, by windings 
and dangers, safe down to sea. 

I asked the man what they were going to Orleans 
Island for, and he explained that they lived there 
through the winter months — they and other pilots, 
many others. It was a pilot colony, set out in mid : 
stream. Yes, it was cut off from the land, quite cut 
off; they liked it so. Sometimes they did n't come 
ashore for weeks ; it was not exactly fun fighting those 
ice-floes. And they all laughed again; well, not ex- 
actly ! 

Meantime several jolly little cutters, no higher than 
cradles, had jingled up with more men in furs and one 
woman. Also boxes and bundles. 

"Pilots?" I asked. 

The man nodded. 

"And the woman?" 

"Dees lady, pilot's wife. She been seek." And he 
went on in a jargon that is charming, but not for imi- 



THE RIVER PILOT 143 

tation, to explain that they would lay the sick lady in 
the bottom of the boat and pile coats over her and 
around her until it was tolerably sure she could n't 
freeze. From the way he spoke one would fancy they 
were about to start for the North Pole, but I presently 
understood that this two-mile ice journey over the 
crackling St. Lawrence — the crackling comes from the 
ice- crust breaking as the tide drops under it — is about 
as hard a test of men's endurance as any Arctic per- 
formance. 

They were all gathered now save one, whose cutter 
tarried still. He was a good pilot, but overfond of the 
convivial glass, and was no doubt this very moment in 
some uproarious company, forgetful that the start was 
to be sharp on the hour. Well, they would give him 
ten minutes more, say fifteen minutes, pauvre gargon. 

Then they fell to discussing winter navigation, and 
whether it would ever come on the St. Lawrence as it 
had on rivers in Russia. A pilot in coon-skins was 
sure it would come; they would put on one of these 
new-fangled ice-crunching steamers to keep the main 
channel open, and, sacre bleu, there you are! That 
would save five months every year. But the others 
shook their heads ; they did n't believe it, and did n't 
want it anyway. A pilot, sir, must have a certain time 
to smoke his pipe ! 

Then one man told what the ice did to a sailing- 
vessel he was taking down the river late one season. 
He hoped never to take another down so late. He 
had got out of his course one night in the dangerous 
ways off Crane Island, and finally dropped anchor to 
hold her against the crush of ice. But the anchor chain 
snapped like shoe-string under the ice pressure, and 
they were borne along on a glacier-field until they 
struck on a reef — just what he had feared. Now, the 



144 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

ice could neither break the reef nor drive them over 
it, but it ground its way right through the schooner's 
stern, ripping her wide open, so that the river poured 
in, and down they went until the yard-arms touched 
the hummocks, with pilot and crew left to scramble 
over the floe as best they could in the darkness, and 
wait for daylight on the frozen rocks. 

At this the others, taking up the cue of thrilling hap- 
penings, told stories of dangers on the river one after 
another until the tardy pilot, who had jingled up mean- 
while unnoticed, was in his turn forced to wait for 
them. 

"I was just putting off one night," began a tall man, 
who spoke better English than the rest, "just putting 
off from this very place — " % 

"Thash nothing," interrupted the later comer, "I 
shaw sh-sword fish clashe a wh-whale once off Sague- 
nay River, an wh-whale — an sh-sword fish — " then he 
mumbled to himself and dozed by the stove. 

The tall man went on with his tale, which described 
how, on the night in question, he was about to board a 
down-coming steamer of the Leyland line (he was to 
take the place of the Montreal pilot), when she crashed 
into a tramp steamer- coming up in a head-on collision, 
and two sailors sleeping in their bunks were instantly 
killed. He described the panic that ensued, and told 
what they did, and wound up with a queer theory 
(which he declared perfectly sound, and the others 
agreed with him) that the growth of cities along the 
river is every year increasing the danger of such night 
collisions through the dazzle of lights. 

Presently we started for the boats. A burly line, 
with caps reaching down, and collars reaching up, 
until everything was covered — ears, forehead, chin, 
everything but a peeping place for nose and eyes. I 



THE RIVER PILOT 



145 




RIVER-BUOYS ON THE BANK FOR THE WINTER. 



can still hear the squeak and crunch of snow under 
foot, and see the glare of it. We passed a snow-field, 
where the river-buoys are left through winter, spar- 
buoys, gas-buoys, and bell-buoys ranged along now 
like great red tops numbed by the cold to sleep. 

Then they put off in the boats — three open boats — 
that are sleds as well, with runners on the flat bottoms 
and ends turned up in an easy slant, so that when the 
broken ice gets too thick for paddling they may be 
hauled up to slide over it. This queer method of tran- 
sit is practised on the St. Lawrence, by those who dare, 
during certain weeks of winter when the river is no 
longer open nor yet frozen into a solid ice-bridge, but 
partly open and partly solid. So it was now. 

The first rule of the boats is that every man lay hand 



146 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

to paddle and work. There are no passengers here but 
the sick, and they are rarely taken. Not that the pilots 
would mind paddling other men across, but the other 
men would almost certainly freeze if they sat still. 
There is no safety against the blasts that sweep this 
river, when the glass says twenty below, but in vigor- 
ous, ceaseless exertion. 

So there they go through the ice-choked river, swing- 
ing their paddles lustily, every pilot of them, heads 
nodding under black astrakhan caps, shoulders heaving, 
off for home. Now they strike the first solid place, 
and the men forward climb out carefully and heave up 
the boat's nose a couple of feet to see if the ice will 
hold her. Then all climb out, and with dragging and 
pushing get ahead for a hundred feet or so. See, now 
they stop and swing their arms ! Already the pitiless 
wind is biting through their furs. And think of that 
poor woman ! 

Presently they reach an open spot some dozen yards 
across, and all but one take places in the boat, the stern 
man standing behind on the ice to push off, and then, 
with nicely judged effort, spring aboard as he gives the 
last impulse that shoots her into the river. 

From the open space they paddle into a jam of grind- 
ing ice-blocks that hold hard against them, but are 
scarce solid enough to bear the sledges. They must 
work through somehow, poling and fending, to yonder 
heaped-up ledge, where up they go again on a great 
rough raft of ice that will test their muscles and their 
skill before they get across, and drift them a quarter 
of a mile or so up-stream while they are doing it. 

Up-stream, did I say? Yes, for there is this odd 
thing about the St. Lawrence, even at Quebec, that its 
current streams up and down, up and down, as the tide 
changes. For seven hours the river conquers the tide, 



THE RIVER PILOT 147 

and the water runs down to sea. Then for five hours 
the tide conquers the river, and the water runs up from 
the sea. So now, after all their toiling, they are actu- 
ally further from home than when they started. They 
should have set out just before the turn of tide (that 
was their plan), but they waited until just after the 
turn, and will pay for the delay and their yarn spin- 
ning with an hour more of this ice-fighting than they 
need have had — and an hour out there is a long, long 
time. 

Even here, on the bank, much less than an hour is 
enough of time. The cold grows piercing. The day 
is drawing to a close. The sky is dull. The river 
grinds on with its grayish burden. On the heights of 
Levis, opposite, some lights of early evening break out. 
There also pilots live, Indians come from an Indian vil- 
lage down the river, where they make the peerless birch 
canoes. All along this grand St. Lawrence live men 
whose business it is to face unusual perils, whose nerve 
fails them not, whether paddling some frail bark 
through furious rapids or guiding a steamboat down a 
raging torrent, with many lives in their keeping. 

We must see more of these men, and watch them at 
their work. We must see the Iroquois pilots at their 
reservation near Montreal, the lads Lord Wolseley took 
with him up the Nile to brave its cataracts, when the 
English set out, in 1884, to bring relief to Gordon. We 
mm ': see "Big John," famous now for years as wheels- 
man of the great excursion boats that shoot the rage 
of waters at Lachine. We must see the raftsmen, too, 
and — ah, but it is cold here ! — let us climb the cliff 
again and find some shelter. 



Ill 



NOW WE WATCH THE MEN WHO SHOOT THE 
FURIOUS RAPIDS AT LACHINE 

WOULD you see the most skilful pilots in the 
world, men who know all the tricks with ocean 
liners and the Indian tricks as well, who right the rush 
of seventy-foot tides in the Bay of Fundy, or drive 
their frail canoes through furious gorges, or coolly 
turn the nose of a thousand-ton steamboat into the 
white jaws of rock-split rapids where a yard either 
way or a second's doubt would mean destruction, or 
hitch long hawsers to a log raft big as a city block (the 
lumber in a single raft may be worth a hundred thou- 
sand dollars), and swing her down a tumbling water- 
way hundreds of miles, with a peril in every one, and 
land her safe? If you would see all this, go to the 
wonderful St. Lawrence, which sweeps in wide and 
troubled reaches from the Great Lakes to the sea. 

Of course I do^ not mean that any one man can do 
all these things, — that would be asking too much, — 
but each in his own line, half-breed or Indian or fur- 
bundled voyageur, has such quickness of eye, such 
surety of hand, that you will be glad to watch the 
rafters on their rafts, and ask no more of them, or the 
canoeists at their paddles, or the big-craft pilots at 
their wheels. 

Let us stand on the long iron bridge that spans the 
St. Lawrence just above Montreal, the very place to 

148 



THE RIVER PILOT 149 

study the river as it narrows and runs swifter for its 
smashing plunge through yonder rapids to the east, 
the dreaded Lachine Rapids, whose snarling teeth flash 
white in the sun. Look down into the greenish rush, 
and see how the waters hurl past these good stone 
piers, sharp-pointed up-stream against the tearing of 
winter ice ! Here goes the torrent of Niagara and the 
inland ocean of Superior and Erie and Ontario, all 
crushed into a funnel of land by this big island at the 
left that blocks the flow, and gorged by the in-pour of 
the Ottawa a few miles back that brings down the 
floods of southern Canada. As fast as a horse can gal- 
lop runs the river here, and faster and faster it goes as 
the long slant takes it, ten, twelve, fourteen miles an 
hour (which is something for a river), until a dozen 
islands strewn across the funnel's lower end goad the 
rapids to their greatest rage. Here is where they kill. 
Then suddenly all is quiet, and the river, spreading to 
a triple width, rests, after its madness, in Montreal's 
placid harbor. 

Standing here, I think of my first experience in 
shooting these rapids (it was on one of the large river 
boats), and I must confess that it gave me no very 
thrilling sense of clanger. There were two or three 
plunges, to be sure, at the steepest part, and a little 
swaying or lurching, but, so far as movement goes, 
nothing to disturb one accustomed to the vicissitudes 
of, say, ordinary trolley-car navigation. However, 
when I came to the reason of this fairly smooth de- 
scent, and saw what it means to stand at the wheel 
through that treacherous channel, I found my wonder 
growing. I thought of the lion-tamer, whose skill is 
shown not so much by what happens while he is in 
the cage as by what does not happen. A hundred 
ways there are of doing the wrong thing with one of 



ISO CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

these boats, and only a single way of doing the right 
thing. For four miles the pilot must race along a 
squirming, twisting, plunging thread of water, that 
leaps ahead like a greyhound, and changes its crooked- 
ness somewhat from day to day with wind and tide. 
In that thread alone is safety; elsewhere is ruin and 




"big john" steering a boat through the lachine rapids. 



wreck. Instantly he- must read the message of a boil- 
ing eddy or the menace of a beckoning reef, and take 
it this way or that instantly, for there are the hungry 
rocks on either hand. He must know things without 
seeing them; must feel the pulse of the rapids, as it 
were, so that when a mist clouds his view, or the 
shine of a low-hung rainbow dazzles him, he may still 
go right. It is a fact that with all the pilots in this 
pilot-land, and all the hardy watermen born and 
brought up on the St. Lawrence, there are not ten — 
perhaps not six — men in Canada to-day, French or 
English or Indian, who would clare this peril. For all 



THE RIVER PILOT 151 

other rapids of the route, the Gallop Rapids, the Split- 
rock Rapids, the Cascades, and the rest, there are 
pilots in plenty; but not for those of Lachine. And, 
to use the same simile again, I saw that the shooting 
of these Lachine Rapids is like the taming of a particu- 
larly fierce lion ; it is a business by itself that few men 
care to undertake. 

So it came that I sought out one of these few, Fred 
Ouillette, pilot and son of a pilot, an idol in the com- 
pany's eyes, a hero to the boys of Montreal, a figure 
to be stared at always by anxious passengers as he 
peers through the window atop the forward deck, a 
man whom people point to as he passes : "There 's the 
fellow that took us through the rapids. That 's Ouil- 
lette." This unsought notoriety has made him shy. 
He does not like to talk about his work or tell you 
how it feels to do this thing. A dash of Indian blood 
is in him, with some of the silent, stoic, Indian nature. 
Yet certain facts he vouchsafed, when I went to his 
home, that help one to an understanding of the pilot's 
life. 

He emphasized this, for instance, as essential in a 
man who would face that fury of waters, he must not be 
afraid. One would say that the rapids feel where the 
mastery is, whether with them or with the pilot, and 
woe to him if pounding heart or wavering hand betray 
him. The rapids will have no mercy. And there are 
pilots, it appears, who know the Lachine Rapids, every 
foot of them, and could do Quillette's work perfectly if 
Ouillette were standing near, yet would fail utterly if 
left alone. Every danger they can overcome but the 
one that lies in themselves. They cannot brave their 
own fear. He cited the case of a pilot's son who had 
worked in the Lachine Rapids for years, helping his 
father, and learned the river as well as a man can 



152 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

know it. At the old man's death, this son announced 
that he would take his father's place, and shoot the 
rapids as they always had done; yet a season passed, 
then a second season, and always he postponed begin- 
ning, and, with one excuse or another, took his boats 
through the Lachine Canal, a safe but tame short cut, 
not likely to draw tourists. 

"Not start heem right, that fadder," said Ouillette. 
"Now too late. Now nevair he can learn heem right." 

"Why, how should he have started him?" I asked. 

"Same way like my fadder start me." And then, 
in his jerky Canadian speech, he explained how this 
was. 

Ouillette went back to his own young manhood, to 
the years when he, too, stood by his father's side and 
watched him take the big boats down. What a pic- 
ture he drew in his queer, rugged phrases ! I could 
see the old pilot braced at the six-foot wheel, with 
three men in oilskins standing by to help him put her 
over, Fred one of the three. And it was "Hip !" 
"Bas!" "Hip!" "Bas!" ("Up!" "Down!" "Up!" 
"Down!") until the increasing roar of the cataract 
drowned all words, and then it was a jerk of shoulders 
or head, this way or that, while the men strained at 
the spokes. Never' once was the wheel at rest after 
they entered the rapids, but spinning, spinning always, 
while the boat shot like a snake through black rocks 
and churning chasms. 

They used to take the boats — as Ouillette takes them 
still — at Cornwall, sixty miles up the river, and, before 
coming to Lachine, they would shoot the swift Coteau 
Rapids, where many a life has gone, then the terrify- 
ing Cedar Rapids, which seem the most dangerous 
of all, and finally, the Split-rock Rapids, which some 
say arc the most dangerous. And each year, as the 




FRED OUILLETTE, THE YOUNG PILOT. 



154 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

season opened, Fred would ask his father to let him 
take the wheel some day when the river was high and 
the rocks well covered, and the boat lightly laden, 
wishing thus to try the easiest rapids under easiest 
conditions. But his father would look at him and say : 
"Do you know the river, my son? Are you sure you 
know the river?" And Fred would answer: "Father, 
I think I do." For how could he be sure until he 
had stood the test? 

So it went on from year to year, and Ouillette was 
almost despairing of a chance to show himself worthy 
of his father's teaching, when, suddenly, the chance 
came in a way never to be forgotten. It was late in 
the summer, and the rapids, being low, were at their 
very worst, rince the rocks were nearer the surface. 
Besides that, on this particular day they were carrying 
a heavy load, and the wind was southeast, blowing 
hard — the very wind to make trouble at the bad places. 
They had shot through all the rapids but the last, and 
were well below the Lachine bridge when the elder 
Ouillette asked the boy, "My son, do you know the 
river?" 

And Fred answered as usual, without any thought 
of what was coming, next, "Father, I think I do." 

They were just at the danger-point now, and all the 
straining waters were sucking them down to the first 
plunge. 

"Then take her through," said the old man, stepping 
back; "there is the wheel." 

"My fadder he make terreeble thing for me — too 
much terreeble thing," said Ouillette, shaking his head 
at the memory. 

But he took her through somehow, half blinded by 
the swirl of water and the shock. At the wheel he 
§tood, and with a touch of bis father's hand now and 



THE RIVER PILOT 155 

then to help him, he brought the boat down safely. 
There was a kind of Spartan philosophy in the old 
man's action. His idea was that, could he once make 
his son face the worst of this business and come out 
unharmed, then never would the boy know fear again, 
for all the rest would be easier than what he had al- 
ready done. And certainly his plan worked well, for 
Fred Ouillette has been fearless in the rapids ever since. 

"Have you lost any lives?" I asked, reaching out 
for thrilling stories. 

"Nevair," said he. 

"Ever come near it?" 

He looked at me a moment, and then said quietly : 
"Always, sair, we come near it." 

Then he told of cases where at the last moment he 
had seen some mad risk in going down, and had turned 
his steamer in the very throat of the torrent, and, with 
groaning wheels and straining timbers, fought his way 
back foot by foot to safety. Once a fog dropped about 
them suddenly, and once the starboard rudder-chain 
broke. This last was all but a disaster, for they were 
clown so far that the river must surely have conquered 
the engines had they tried to head up-stream. Ouil- 
lette saw there was only one way to save his boat and 
the lives she carried, and, putting the wheel hard aport, 
for the port chain held, he ran her on the rocks. And 
there she lay, the good steamboat Spartan, all that 
night, with passengers in an anguish of excitement, 
while Indian pilots from Caughnawaga made it quite 
clear what they were good for — put off swiftly in their 
little barks straight into that reeling flood, straight 
out to the helpless boat, then back to shore, each bear- 
ing two or three of the fear-struck company. Then 
out again and back again until darkness came. Then 
put again and back again when darkness had fallen, 




INDIAN PILOTS RESCUE PASSENGERS FROM THE STEAMER ON THE ROCKS. 



THE RIVER PILOT 15; 

Think of that ! Hour after hour, with paddles alone, 
these dauntless sons of Iroquois braves fought the 
rapids, triumphed over the rapids, and brought to land 
through the night and the rage of waters every soul 
on that imperiled vessel ! 

Another instance he gave, showing the admirable 
alertness of these Indians, as well as their skill with the 
canoe. It was in the summer of 1900, late of an 
afternoon, and so heavy was the August heat that even 
on the river the passengers were gasping for air. 
Shortly after they entered the cataract several persons 
saw a large man climb to the top of a water-tank on 
the hurricane-deck, and seat himself there in one of the 
folding deck-chairs. The man's purpose was, evi- 
dently, to seek a cooler spot than he had found below, 
and the boat was running so steadily that no one 
thought of danger. Indeed, there would have been 
no danger had not the gentleman fallen into a comfort- 
able doze just as Ouillette steadied the boat for her first 
downward leap and then brought her over to starboard 
with a jerk, which jerk so effectually disturbed the 
large man's slumbers that the first thing he knew he 
was shot off his rickety chair, over the side of the water- 
tank, clean over the steamboat's decks, down, splash ! 
into the St. Lawrence at a point where it is not good 
for any man to be. He was right in the main sweep 
of the river, where one may live for twenty minutes 
if he can keep afloat so long, but scarcely longer, since 
twenty minutes will bring him to the last rush of rap- 
ids, where swimmers do not live. 

What happened after this I have from an eye-wit- 
ness, who rushed back with others at the cry, "Man 
overboard !" and joined in a reckless throwing over of 
chairs, boxes, and life-preservers that profited little, for 
the man was left far behind by the steamboat, which 




MAN OVERBOARD! AN INDIAN CANOE TO THE RESCUE. 



THE RIVER PILOT 159 

could do nothing — and Ouillette could do nothing — but 
whistle a hoarse danger-warning and go its way. A 
magnificent swimmer he must have been, this rudely 
awakened tourist, for the passengers, crowded astern, 
could follow the black speck that was his head bobbing 
along steadily, undisturbed, one would say, by dan- 
gers, apparently going up-stream as the steamboat 
gained on him — really coming down-stream with the 
full force of the current, and yielding to it entirely, all 
strength saved for steering. Not a man on the boat 
believed that the swimmer would come out alive, and, 
helpless to save, they stood there in sickening fascina- 
tion, watching him sweep down to his death. 

Then suddenly rang out a cry : "Look ! There ! A 
canoe !" And out from the shadows and shallows off- 
shore shot a slender prow with a figure in bow and 
stern. The Indians were coming to the rescue ! They 
must have started even as the man fell, — such a thing 
it is to be an Indian ! — and, with a knowledge of the 
rapids that is theirs alone, they had aimed the swift 
craft in a long slant that would let them overtake the 
swimmer just here, at this very place where now they 
were about to overtake him, at this very place where 
presently they did overtake him and draw him up, all 
but exhausted, from as close to the brink of the Great 
Rapids as ever he will get until he passes over them. 
Then they paddled back. 



A 1 



IV 



WHAT CANADIAN PILOTS DID IN THE CATA- 
RACTS OF THE NILE 

ND now suppose we follow these Indians to their 
reservation at Caughnawaga, where the govern- 
ment has given them land and civic rights and encour- 
agement to peaceful ways. The surest time of year 
to find the pilots at home is the winter season; for 
then, with navigation frozen up, they have weeks to 
spend drifting along in the sleepy village life, waiting 
for the spring. There, in many a hearth-fire circle, — 
only, alas ! the hearth is a commonplace shiny stove 
more often than not, — we may listen to tales without 
end of rapids and river, while the men smoke solemnly, 
and the women do beadwork and moccasins for the 
next year's peddling. We may hear "Big Baptiste" 
tell for what exploits of the paddle his head came to 
be on the ten-dollar bills of Canada, set in dignity and 
feathers; and hear "Big John," famous for years as 
a steamboat pilot, describe his annual shooting of the 
Lachine Rapids at the opening of navigation, when, 
first of all the pilots, he goes down in his canoe, — this 
is a time-honored custom, — so that the others may be 
sure that it is safe to follow. 

He will give us the story, too, amid nods of appro- 
val, of shooting these same rapids for a wager on a 
certain New Year's Day, and coming down safely, ice 
and all. There, sir, is the paddle he used, if you doubt 
the tale, and the canoe lies out in the snow. 

160 



THE RIVER PILOT i6r 

And be sure we shall not have been long in Caugh- 
nawaga without hearing of the proud part these In- 
dians took in the British expedition up the Nile in 
1884 to relieve Khartum. Treasured in more than 
one household are these words of Lord Wolseley, writ- 
ten to the governor-general of Canada: "I desire to 
place on record not only my own opinion, but that of 
every officer connected with the management of the 
boat columns, that the services of these voyageurs has 
been of the greatest possible value. . . . They 
have on many occasions shown not only great skill but 
also great courage in navigating their boats through 
difficult and dangerous waters." 

"How many men did Caughnawaga send on this 
expedition?" I inquired. 

"Fifty-five men besides Louis Jackson," said one of 
the Indians. 

"Oh," said I; "and — and who is Louis Jackson?" 

The Indian's face showed plain disgust that there 
should be any one who did not know all about Louis 
Jackson. 

"Louis Jackson was the leader. Lie is our chief 
man. He lives over there." 

It resulted in my calling on Mr. Jackson, a big, pow- 
erful man, fully meriting, I should say, the high opin- 
ion in which he is held. If there is any Indian strain 
in him it must be very slight ; he would pass, rather, 
for an uncommonly energetic Englishman, with such a 
fund of adventure to his credit, and so entertaining 
a way of drawing upon it, that one would listen for 
hours while he talks. 

Jackson made clear to me what important duty was 

given the Canadian voyageurs in this Nile campaign. 

their success or failure in taking heavy-laden boats 

1 the cataracts Lord Wolseley proposed to decide 






1 62 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

whether the troops for Gordon's relief should go 
straight up the Nile or around by the Red Sea and 
the desert. It was the river if they succeeded; it 
was the desert if they failed : and twenty thousand 

soldiers waited at 
Alexandria in a 
fever of impa- 
tience while Jack- 
son and his band, 
with - some hun- 
dreds of voya- 
geurs from other 
provinces, let it be 
seen if their train- 
ing on the St. 
Lawrence would 
serve against river 
perils in ancient 
Egypt. LordWol- 
seley was confi- 
dent it would, for 
during the Riel 
rebellion he had 
found out what 
stuff was in these 
men. Still he 
dared not start his 
army until it was certain those formidable cataracts 
could be surmounted. And that meant a month, let 
the men strain as they might at paddles and haul- 
ing-lines — a month to wait, a month for Gordon to 
wait. 

"Oh," said Jackson, gloomily, "if Lord Wolseley 
had only trusted us without any trial ! Why, there 
was nothing, sir, in that Nile River we had n't tackled 




THE PILOT, 



BIG JOHN. 



THE RIVER PILOT 163 

a hundred times as boys right here in the St. Law- 
rence. When you talk of cataracts it sounds big, but 
we 've got rapids all around here, just plain every-day 
rapids, that will make their cataracts look sick. Of 
course we did it — did it easy; but when we got up to 
the top of the whole business, where was our army? 
Back in Alexandria, sir ! And it makes a man sad to 
know that those boys in Khartum were dying just 
then ; it makes a man mighty sad to know that !" 

One sees what ground there may be for such lament 
on turning up the dates of this unhappy Nile expedi- 
tion, and the heart aches at the sight of those dumb 
figures. Think of it ! the relief-party reached Khar- 
tum about February 1, 1885 — too late by less than a 
week. Khartum had fallen; Khartum, sore-stricken, 
lay in fresh-smoking ruins. And when at last British 
gunboats, firing as they came, steamed into view of 
the tortured city that had hoped for them so long, 
there was no General Gordon within walls to thrill 
with joy. General Gordon was dead, cut down ruth- 
lessly by the Arabs a fezv days before — killed on Jan- 
uary 27, with his countrymen so near, so short a dis- 
tance down the river, that their camp might almost 
have been made out with field-glasses. What a dif- 
ference here a little more hurrying would have made, 
a very little more hurrying! 

It would be interesting indeed if we might hear the 
whole story of these months spent in fighting a river, 
in battling with cataract after cataract, in rowing and 
steering and sailing and hauling a fleet of boats and 
supplies for an army up, up, up into unknown rapids, 
through a burning desert, such a long, long way. It 
would be an inspiration could we know in detail what 
these pilots did and suffered, what perils they defied, 
and how some of them perished — in short, what prob- 



1 64 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

lems of the river they went at and how they fared in 
solving them. That would make a book by itself. 

A few things we may know, however. This, for 
instance : that, while the maps put down six cataracts 
in the Nile between Cairo and Khartum, say fifteen 
hundred miles, there are, in truth, many more than six. 
Between the second and third alone there are more 
than six, and some of them bad. Also that the river 
beyond the third cataract curves away in a great ram- 
bling S, so that Lord Wolseley planned to send an 
expedition, as he actually did, straight on from that 
point by a short cut across the desert. The important 
thing then, and the difficult thing, was to reach the 
third cataract, and upon this all the skill of the voya- 
geurs was concentrated. 

The first cataract, about five hundred miles above 
Cairo, is fairly easy of ascent ; the second cataract, 
some two hundred and fifty miles farther on, is per- 
haps the most dangerous of all, and resembles its rival 
at Lachine in this, that the Nile here strains through 
myriad foam-lashed islands strewn in the channel for 
a length of seven miles, like teeth of a crooked, comb. 
A balloonist hovering here would see the river stream- 
ing through these islands in countless channels that 
wind and twist in a maze of silver threads. But to 
lads in the boats these silver threads were so many 
plunging foes, torrents behind torrents, sweeping down 
roaring streets of rock, boiling through jagged lanes 
of rock; and up that seven-mile way the pilots had to 
go and keep their craft afloat. 

Jackson described the boats used in this hazardous 
undertaking. There were, first, the ordinary whale- 
boats, about twenty-five feet long and five feet high, 
with a crew of ten Dongolese at the oars, and two or 
three sails to catch the helpful northerly winds. Over- 



1 66 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

head was an awning stretched against the scorching 
sun, and around the sides were boxes and bags of pro- 
visions and ammunition, — five or six tons to a boat, — 
piled high for shelter against bullets, for no one could 
tell when a band of Arabs, lurking at some vantage- 
point,, might fall to picking off the men. At a cata- 
ract the crew would go ashore, save two, a voyageur 
in the stern to steer and another in the bow to fend 
off rocks, or, in case of need, give one swift, severing 
hatchet-stroke on the hauling-rope. For, of course, 
the ascending power came from a line of Dongolese, 
black fellows, with backs and muscles to delight a 
prize-fighter, who, by sheer strength of body, would 
drag the boat, cargo and all (or sometimes lightened 
of her cargo by the land-carriers), up, up, with grunt- 
ing and heaving, against the down-rush of the river. 

And woe to the boat if her hatchet-man fails to cut 
the rope at the very second of danger! So long as 
the craft can live his arm must stay uplifted; yet he 
must cut instantly when it is plain she can live no 
longer. And here one marvels ; for how can any- 
thing be plain in a blinding, deafening cataract ? And 
how shall the man decide, as they rise on a glassy 
sweep and hang for an instant over some rock-gulf 
beaten into by tons of water, whether they can go 
through it or not? Truly this is no place for waver- 
ing nerve or halting judgment. The man must know 
and act, know and act, because he is that kind of a 
man; and, even so, in hard places above the second 
cataract two Indians from Caughnawaga, Morris and 
Capitan, fine pilots both, held back their blades too 
long, or, striking as the boat plunged, missed the rope, 
and paid for the error with their lives. 

And even with hauling-line cut in time, the pilots 
have only changed from peril to peril, for now they 




CUTTING THE LINE — A MOMENT OF PERIL. 



1 68 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

are adrift in the cataract, and must shoot down un- 
known rapids, chancing everything, swinging into 
shore as soon as may be with the help of paddle and 
sail. Then is all to be done over again — the line 
made fast, the black men harnessed on, and the risk 
of a new channel encountered as before. Thus days 
or weeks would pass in getting the whale-boats up a 
single cataract. 

And sometimes they would face the still more for- 
midable task of dragging a whole steamboat up the 
rapids, with troops aboard and stores to last for weeks. 
Then how the hauling-men would swarm at the lines, 
and shout queer African words, and strain at the ropes, 
when the order came, until knees and shoulders scraped 
the ground ! This was no problem for untutored 
minds, but took the best wits of Royal Engineers and 
gentlemen from the schools, who knew the ways of 
hitching tackle to things so as to make pulley-blocks 
work miracles. At least, it seemed a miracle the day 
they started the big side-wheeler Nassif-Kheir up the 
second cataract with five hawsers on her, three spread- 
ing from her bow and two checking her swing on 
either quarter, and her own steam helping her. 

There stood five hundred Dongolese ready to haul, 
and there was the whole floating population — pilots, 
soldiers, and camp-followers — gathered on the banks 
to wonder and to criticize the job which nobody un- 
derstood but half a dozen straight little, men in white 
helmets, who stood about on rocks and snapped things 
out in English that were straightway yelled down 
the lines in vigorous Dongolese. It was Trigonom- 
etry speaking, and the law of component forces, and 
"Confound those niggers ! Tell 'em to slack away on 
that starboard hawser. Tell 'em to slack away!" 

It was respectfully presented to Mathematics, Esq., 




#\J5 ► ,^J^_ j & 




"over they went, the whole black line of them." 



170 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 




HOW THE ENGINEERS WERE CARRIED OVER TO THE NILE ISLANDS. 



that the "niggers" in question could n't slack away 
any more without letting the hawser go or tumbling 
into the rapids, for they were on one of the little 
islands, on the brink of it, holding the steamer back 
while the land-lines hauled against them. 

"Then in they go," ordered Trigonometry. "Tell 
'em to get over to that next island. Tell 'em to get 
over quick!" 

And over they went, the whole black line of them, 
right through the rapids, swimming and struggling in 
the buffeting surge, getting across somehow, hawser 
and all, where white men must have perished. And 
the steamboat had gained a hundred feet. 

Then one of the front lines of haulers in turn had to 
move forward to an island, to swim for it with six 



THE RIVER PILOT 171 

hundred feet of hawser slapping the river as they 
dragged it. What a picture here as these naked men 
leaped in, fearless, each with a flashing bayonet thrust 
in his thick white turban! Mathematics, Esq., had no 
notion of trying this sort of thing when he changed 
islands, vastly preferring his pulley-blocks, and would 
presently be hauled across on a rope trolley, as pas- 
sengers are swung ashore from wrecks by the life- 
saving men. That made a picture, too ! 

Thus, slowly and with infinite pains, they worked 
the patient steamboat, length by length, island by 
island, torrent by torrent, up through the Great Gate 
(Bab-el-Kebir), up to the very head waters of the 
second cataract ; and there, with victory in their grasp, 
saw the forward hawser snap suddenly with the noise 
of a gun, and the old side-wheeler swing out helpless 
into the main rush of the river, swing clean around as 
the side-lines held, and then start down. Whereupon 
it was: "Cut hawsers, everybody!" and drop these 
pulley-blocks and tackle-fixings, useless now, and let 
her go, let her go, since there is no stopping her, and 
Heaven help the boys on board ! Then, amid shouts of 
dismay, the big boat Nassif-Kheir plunged forward to 
her destruction, while the mathematical gentlemen 
stared in horror — then stared in amazement. For 
look ! She keeps to the channel ! She is running true ! 
Wonder of wonders, she is shooting the rapids, shoot- 
ing the greatest cataract of the Nile, where boat of her 
tonnage never passed before ! 

The Nassif-Kheir was saved, and every man aboard 
her, and every box of stores. She was saved by 
an humble Canadian pilot, who had never studied 
trigonometry, but who stepped to the wheel when he 
saw the peril, and steered her down those furious 
rapids as he had steered other boats down other rapids 



172 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

on the old St. Lawrence. And after that, when the 
expedition found itself in trouble in the upper cata- 
racts, say those of Tangoor or Akashe or Ambigole 
or Dal, and when the Royal Engineers had drawn up 
some neat plan with compasses and squares for doing 
a certain thing with a boat, and had proved by the 
books that it could be done, and agreed that it should 
be done forthwith, then some one would usually say, 
just at the last, as by an afterthought : 

"I suppose we might as well have in one of those 
voyageur chaps, just to see what he thinks of it!" 

And they usually had him in. 



THE BRIDGE-BUILDER 

i 

IN WHICH WE VISIT A PLACE OF UNUSUAL 
FEARS AND PERILS 

AS I went time and again to the great East River 
. Bridge, the new one whose huge steel towers 
were drawing to full height in the last months of the 
century, I found myself under a growing impression 
that here at last was a business with not only danger 
in it, but fear of danger. Divers and steeple-climbers 
I had seen who pronounced their work perfectly safe 
(though I knew better), and balloonists of the same 
mind about perils of the air; there were none, they 
declared, despite a list of deaths to prove the con- 
trary. And so on with others. But here on the 
bridge were men who showed by little things, and 
sometimes admitted, that they were afraid of the 
black-ribbed monster. And it seemed to me that these 
were men with the best kind of grit in them, for al- 
though they were afraid of the bridge, they were not 
afraid of their fear, and they stuck to their job week 
after week, month after month, facing the same old 
peril until — well — 

I came upon this fear of the bridge the very first time 
I sought leave to go upon the unfinished structure. It 
was in a little shanty of an office on the Brooklyn side, 
where, after some talk, I suggested to an assistant en- 
gineer, bent over his plans, that I would like to take 

173 



174 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

a picture or two from the top of the tower. That 
seemed a simple enough thing. 

"Think you can keep your head up there?" said he, 
with a sharp look. 

I told him I had climbed to a steeple-top. 

"Yes. But you were lashed fast then in a swing, 
and had a rope to hold on to. Here you 've got to 
climb up by yourself without anything to hold on to, 
and it 's twice as high as the average steeple." 

"How high is that?" I asked. 

"Well, the saddles are three hundred and forty feet 
above the river." 

"Saddles?" 

"That 's what we call 'em. They 're beds of steel 
on top of the towers for the cables to rest on — nice 
little beds weighing thirty-six tons each." 

"Oh!" said I. "How do you get them up?" 

"Swing 'em up with steam-derricks and cables. 
Guess you would n't care for that job, hanging out on 
one o' those booms by your eyelashes." 

"Perhaps not," I admitted. "But I 'd like to 
watch it." 

He said I must see somebody with more authority, 
and turned to his plans. 

"You don't feel in danger yourself, do you," I per- 
sisted, "when you go up?" 

"Don't, eh ?" he answered. "Well, I nearly got 
cut in two the other day by a plate-washer. It fell 
over a hundred feet, and went two inches slam into a 
piece of timber I was standing on." Then he ex- 
plained what havoc a small piece of iron — some stray 
bolt or harntner — can work after a long drop. 

"That plate-washer," said he, "weighed only two 
pounds and a half when it began to fall ; but it weighed 
as much as you do when it struck — and you 're a fair 
size." 




THE WORK OF THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS. A TOWER OF THE NEW EAST RIVER 

BRIDGE. THIS PHOTOGRAPH ALSO ILLUSTRATES THE NARROW ESCAPE 

OF JACK MCGREG'.' I ' "'' C WINGING COLUMN. (SEE PAGE I92.) 



176 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

"Is that based on calculation," said I, "or is it a 
joke?" 

"It 's based on the laws of gravitation," he an- 
swered, /'and it 's no joke for the man who gets hit. 
Say, why don't you go down in the yard and look 
around a little?" 

I told him I would, and presently went down into 
the yard, a noisy, confusing place, where the wind was 
humming through a forest of scaffolding that held 
the bare black roadway skeleton a hundred feet over- 
head. It was a long street of iron resting on a long 
street of wood, with timber and steel built up in X's 
on X's, the whole rising in an easy slant to yonder 
grim tower that loomed heavy and ugly against the 
sky, a huge bow-legged H with the upper half 
stretched to a great length, and each leg piled up with 
more black X's held by two enormous ones between. 
It looked for all the world as if it had come ready made 
in a box and had been jointed together like children's 
blocks, which is about the truth, for this great bridge 
was finished on paper, then in all its parts, before ever 
a beam of it saw the East River. As I drew near its 
feet (which could take a row of houses between heel 
and toe) I had the -illusion, due to bigness and height, 
that the whole tower was rocking toward me under 
the hurrying clouds; and at first I did not see the 
workmen swarming over it, they were so tiny. 

But they were making noise enough, these work- 
men, with their striking and' hoisting and shouting. 
There was the ring of hammers, the chunk-chunk of 
engines, the hiss of steam, the mellow sound of planks 
falling on planks, and the angry clash of metal. Pres- 
ently, far up the sides of the tower, I made out paint- 
ers dangling on scaffolding or crawling out on girders, 
busy with scrapers and brushes. And higher still I 



THE BRIDGE-BUILDER 177 

saw the glow of red-hot iron, where the riveters were 
working. And at the very top I watched black dots 
of men swing ont over the gulf on the monster derrick- 
booms, or haul on the guiding-lines. And from time 
to time the signal-bell would send its impatient call 
to the throttle-man below, six strokes, four strokes, 
one stroke, telling him what to do with his engine, and 
to do it quick. 

The yardmen seemed to get on in the din by a 
system of strange yells. Here were a score of sturdy 
fellows doing something with a long steel floor-beam. 
They were working- in scattered groups, some on the 
ground, some on the roadway overhead. It was lower 
pulley-blocks, and spread out flapping cables, and hitch 
fast the load, all without any hurry. Suddenly a 
man at the left would put a hand to his mouth and sing 
out : "Hey-y-y !" and a man overhead would answer : 
"Yeow-yeow-yeow !" and then they all would cry : 
"Ho-hoo-ho-hoooo!" and up would go the floor-beam, 
twisting as she lifted, a nice little load of ten tons, and 
presently clang clown on her lofty bed like a peal of 
high-pitched thunder. 

I chanced to be talking with the yard foreman when 
there came such a sudden clang, and then I saw an 
easy-going, rather stolid man pass through a singular 
transformation. Like a piece of bent steel he sprang 
back, every muscle in him tense, and up came his arms 
for defense, and there in his eyes was the look I came 
to know that meant terror of the bridge, and fear of 
sudden death. To me, unfamiliar with the constant 
danger, that clang meant nothing; to him it was like 
a snarl of the grave. 

"Better stand back here," said he, and led me over 
by the air-compressing engine, where we were out of 
ranee. 



178 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

Then he told how a superintendent of construc- 
tion had been nearly killed not long before by a piece 
of falling iron, just where we were standing. And 
looking up through the criss-cross maze, with openings 
everywhere from ground to sky, with workmen every- 
where handling loose iron, I realized that this was a 
kind of slow-fire battle-field, not so very glorious, but 
deadly enough, with shots coming from sky to earth 
every ten minutes, every half -hour — who can know at 
what moment the man above him will drop something, 
or at what moment he himself will drop something on 
the man below ! A tiered-up battle-field, this, where 
each black X, with its hammers and bolts and busy 
gang, is a haphazard battery against all the X's below, 
and a helpless target under all the X's above. 

"Why, sir," said the foreman, "that tower went into 
a reg'lar panic one day because some fool new man on 
top upset a keg o' bolts. Sounded as if the whole 
business was coming down on us." 

I began to realize what tension these men work 
under, what vital force they waste in vague alarms ! 

"It 's queer, though," continued the foreman, "how 
the boys get used to it. See those timbers right at 
the top that come together in a point? We call that 
an A-frame; it 's for the hoisting. Well, the boys 
walk those cross-timbers all the time, say a length of 
thirty feet and a width of one. It 's nothing on the 
ground, but up there with the wind blowing — well, 
you try it. I saw one fellow do a thing that knocked 
me. He stopped half-way across a timber not over 
eight inches wide, took out his match-box, stood on 
his right foot, lifted his left foot, and struck a match 
on his left heel. Then he nursed the flame in his 
hands, got his pipe going good, and walked on across 
the timber. Wha' d' ye think of that ? There he was, 




THERE WAS PAT, FAST ASLEEP, LEGS DANGLING, HEAD NODDING, 
AS COMFORTABLE AS YOU PLEASE.' " 



i8o CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

balanced on one foot, sir, with an awful death on 
either side, and the wind just whooping — all because 
his pipe went out. I would n't do it for — for — Well, 
I would n't do it." 

"Why did n't he wait to light his pipe until he got 
across?" I asked. 

The foreman shook his head. "I give it up. He 
just happened to think of it then, and he done it. 
That 's the way they are, some of 'em. Why, there 
was another fellow, Pat Reagan, as good a man as 
we 've got, and he went sound asleep one day last 
summer, — it was a nice warm day, — sitting on the 
top-chord. That 's a long, narrow girder at the very 
highest point of the end-span. First thing we knew, 
there was Pat, legs dangling, head nodding, comfort- 
able as you please. A few inches either way would 
have fixed him forever ; but he stuck there, by an Irish- 
man's luck, until two of his mates climbed up softly 
and grabbed him. They did n't dare yell for fear he 'd 
be startled and fall." 

While we were talking the wind had strengthened, 
and now every line and rope on the structure stood out 
straight from the sides, and swirls of spray from hoist- 
ing engines overhead flew across the yard, also occa- 
sional splinters. The foreman hurried a man aloft 
with orders to lash fast everything. 

"There 's a hard blow coming up," he predicted, 
"and it 'would n't do a thing' to those big timbers on 
the tower if we left 'em around loose! People have 
no idea what force is in the wind. Wdiy, sir, I 've 
seen it blow a keg of railroad spikes off that tower 
clean across the yard. And one day two planks .thir- 
teen feet long and two inches thick went flying over 
the whole approach-works right plumb through the 
front of a saloon out on the street. That made eight 
hundred feet the "wind carried those planks. As for 



THE BRIDGE-BUILDER 181 

coats and overalls, why, we 've watched lots of 'em 
start from the tower-top and sail off over Brooklyn city 
like kites — yes, sir, like kites; and nobody ever knew 
where they landed." 

"I don't see how the men keep their footing in such 
a gale," I remarked. 

"Well," said he, "we order them clown when it 
blows an out-and-out gale, but they work in 'most any- 
thing short of a gale. And it 's a wonder how they 
do it. It 's not so bad if the wind is steady, for then 
you can lean against it, same as a man leans on a 
bicycle going around a curve; but — " 

"Do you mean," I interrupted, "that they walk nar- 
row girders leaning against the wind — against a hard 
wind?" 

"Certainly; they have to. But that 's not the worst 
of it. Suppose a man is leaning just enough to bal- 
ance the wind, and suddenly the wind lets up, say on a 
gusty day. Then where 's your man ? Or suppose 
it 's winter and the whole bridge is coated with ice, so 
that walking girders is like sliding on glass. Then 
where is he, especially when it 's blowing tricky blasts ? 
Oh, it 's no dream, my friend, working on a bridge!" 

And I, in hearty accord with that opinion, betook 
me back to the office, where I read just outside the 
door this ominous notice : "All accidents must be re- 
ported as soon as possible, or claims therefor will be 
disregarded." 

A workman came up at this moment, and, with a 
half-smile, asked if I knew their motto, the motto of 
the bridge-men. 

"No," said I; "what is it?" 

' 'We never die,' " said he, with a grim glance at 
the notice; "we don't have to." Then, pointing over- 
head : "Come up and see us. I '11 introduce you to 
the boys." 



II 



THE EXPERIENCE OF TWO NOVICES IN BALANCING 

ALONG NARROW GIRDERS AND WATCHING 

THE " TRAVELER " GANG 

NOT that day, but later on, when I had arranged 
it, I accepted this bluff invitation and became ac- 
quainted with "the boys," the ones who "never die," 
and took in the fears and wonders of the bridge at 
closer view. My permit was granted on the express 
understanding that I hold nobody responsible for any 
harm that might befall. I was fortunate in having 
with me as companion in this climb Mr. Varian, the 
artist, who had faced perils of many sorts, but none 
like these. 

First we clambered, pyramid fashion, up the pile 
of granite, big as a church, that will hold the cable- 
ends ; they call it the anchorage. From the top of this 
we could look along the iron street that stretched away 
in a slight up-grade toward the tower. We were 
on a level with the roadway of the bridge, and far 
below us spread the house-tops of Brooklyn. Between 
our stone precipice and the iron street-end yawned a 
gulf that we drew back from, with water in its deepest 
bottom. Here the cables would be buried some day, 
sealed and cemented, piled over with masonry, to hold 
for centuries. 

Standing in the lee of a block that kept off the wind, 
we looked across at the bridge, and planned how pres- 

182 



THE BRIDGE-BUILDER 183 

ently we might reach it by skirting the moat-walls and 
drawing ourselves up at yonder corner where the end- 
span rested. 

Somehow, seen from here, the iron street looked 
delicate, not massive; its sides were trellis-work, its 
top frames gently slanting, and one could fancy the 
whole thing beautifully grown over with vines, a 
graceful arbor-way suspended in mid-air. And down 
the length of this came the strangest sounds — one 
would say a company of woodpeckers of some giant 
sort making riot in an echoing forest. Br-r-r-ip-ip- 
ip-ip — br-r-r-r-up-up-up — br-r-r-ap-ap-ap-ap-ap. What 
was it? Now from this side, up-up-up-br-r-r-up-up, 
and ending abruptly. Then straightway from near 
the top on the other side, ap-ap-ap-br-r-r-r-ap-ap-ap. 
Then fainter from half-way down the street, and then 
from all points at once, a chorus of hammer-birds mak- 
ing the bridge resound in call and in answer, hammer- 
birds with strokes as swift as the roll of a drum. 
What is it ? 

And look! Those points of fire that glow forth 
here and there and vanish as the eye perceives them, 
tiny red lights, tiny yellow lights, that flash from far 
down the iron street and are gone, that flash from all 
along the iron street and are gone! What are they? 
What strange work is doing here ? 

It was the riveters driving the endless red-hot bolts 
that hold the bridge together, driving them with ham- 
mers that you work with a trigger, and aim like a fire- 
man's hose, hammers with rubber pipes dragging be- 
hind that feed in compressed air from an engine. 
Long past are the days when bolts were driven by 
brawny arms and the slow swing of a sledge. Now 
the workman, leaning his stomach against an iron club, 
touches a spring, and, presto ! the hard-kicking, pent- 



THE BRIDGE-BUILDER 485 

up air inside drives the darting club-head back and 
forth, back and forth, quick as a snake strikes, br-r-r- 
r-r-ip-ip-ip-ip, against whatever the steering arms may 
press it. Driving rivets nowadays is something like 
handling a rapid-fire gun. And how your body aches 
from the bruise of that recoil ! 

"We must get nearer to those fellows," said the 
artist ; and presently, after some mild hazards, we were 
safely over on the span, quite as near as was desirable 
to a gang of riveters dangling twenty feet above us on 
a swing. For presently, with a sputter of white sparks, 
a piece of red-hot iron struck the girder we were strad- 
dling, and then went bounding down — down — 

"Nice, hospitable place, this !" remarked the artist, 
as we edged under cover of a wide steel beam. 

Crouching here, we watched another gang of riveters 
on the structure opposite, where we had a better view, 
watched the forge-man pass along the glowing rivets, 
and the buffer-man slip them through ready holes, and 
the hammer-man flatten the flaming ends into smooth, 
burnished heads. And presently a riveter in black 
cap and faded blue jersey climbed down from the 
swing overhead, and explained things to us. He did 
this out of sheer good nature, I think, although he 
may have been curious to know what two men with 
derby hats and kodaks were doing up there. We 
watched his descent in wonder and alarm, for it in- 
volved some lively gymnastics, that he entered upon, 
however, with complete indifference. First he swung 
across from the scaffolding to a girder, the highest 
rail of the bridge, and along this walked as coolly as 
a boy on a wide fence-top, only this happened to be a 
fence one hundred and fifty feet high. Then he bent 
over and caught one of the slanting side supports, and 
down this worked his way as a mountain-climber 



1 86 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 




would work down a preci- 
pice. Presently he stepped 
off at our leA 
never having tak- 
en the pipe from 
his mouth. 

When we asked 
how he dared go 
about so care- 
lessly over a 
they all did 
it, or else got 
whistle blew 



A STRANGE WAY TO 
GO TO MEALS. 



ing abyss, he said 
it; they all got used to 
killed. Why, when the 
we 'd see men swinging 
and sliding and twisting their way down like a lot of 
circus performers. That 's how they* came to dinner; 
that 's how they got back aloft. No, sir ; they could n't 
use life-lines; they moved about too much. Besides, 
what good would a life-line be to a man if the "falls" 



THE BRIDGE-BUILDER 187 

started at him with a ten-ton load, yes, or a twenty-ton 
load? That man has got to skip along pretty lively, 
sir, or he '11 get hurt. Did he mean skip along over 
this web of boards and girders? I inquired. He cer- 
tainly did, and we 'd see plenty of it, if we stayed up 
long. The artist and I shook our heads as we looked 
down that skeleton roadway, gaping open everywhere 
between girders and planks, in little gulfs, ten feet 
wide, five feet wide, two feet wide, quite wide enough 
to make the picture of a man skipping over them a 
very solemn thing. 

Our friend went on to tell us how the riveters often 
get into tight places, say on the tower, where there 
is so little room for the forge-man to heat his bolts 
that he has to throw them up to the hammer-man, 
twenty or thirty feet. 

"What!" exclaimed the artist. "Throw red-hot 
bolts twenty or thirty feet up the tower!" 

"That 's what they do ; and we 've got boys who are 
pretty slick at it. They '11 grab a bolt out of the fire 
with long-handled nippers, and give her a swing and 
a twist, and away she goes sizzling through the air 
straight at the man above; and say, they don't miss 
him once in a hundred times ; and, what 's more, they 
never touch a truss or girder. If they did there 'd be 
a piece of red-hot iron sailing down on the lads below, 
an(jl that would n't be good for their health." 

"How does the hammer-man catch these red-hot 
bolts?" I asked. 

. "In a bucket. Catches 'em every time. That 's a 
thing you want to see, too." 

There were so many things we wanted to see in this 
strange region ! And presently we set forth down the 
iron street, keeping in mind a parting caution of the 
riveter not to look at our feet, but at the way before 



1 88 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

us, and never to look down. As we edged ahead 
cautiously (no skipping along for us, thanks, but paus- 
ing often, and holding fast to whatever offered sup- 
port), we saw that all the bridge-men come over the 
girders, eyes straight ahead, in a shuffling, flat-footed 
way, without much bend in the knees. Look, there 
comes one of them in from the end of a long black 
arm that pushes out like a bowsprit over the gulf ! He 
has been hanging out there, painting the iron. In the 
pose of his body he is a tight-rope walker, in the 
hitch of his legs he is a convict, in the blank stare of 
his face he is a somnambulist. Really he is nothing 
so complicated, but an every-day bridge-man earning 
a hard living; and his wife would be torn with fears 
could she see him now. 

Presently we came to the busiest scene on the struc- 
ture, down where the covered part ended and the iron 
roadway reached on, bare of framework, to the tower. 
Here the "traveler" was working with a double gang 
of men, raising a skeleton of sides and cross-beams 
that were pushing on, pushing on day by day, and 
would finally stretch across the river. Once on the 
"traveler's" deck, we breathed easier, for here we were 
safe from fearsome crevasses, safe on a great wide 
raft of iron and timber, set on double railroad tracks, 
a lumbering steam-giant that goes resounding along, 
when the need is, with its weight of four locomotives, 
its three-story derricks swinging out great booms at 
the corners, its thumping niggerhead engines (two of 
them) for the hoisting, its coal-bins, its water-tanks, 
its coils of rope, its pile of lumber, and its mascot 
kitten, curled up there by the ash-box in a workman's 
coat. They say the bridge has to wait when that kit- 
ten wants her dinner, and woe to the man who would 
treat the little thing unkindly ! 



THE BRIDGE-BUILDER 



189 



This "traveler," with its gangs, is a sort of gigantic 
sewing-machine that stitches the bridge together; it 
lifts all the parts into place and binds them fast, as it 
were, with basting-threads of temporary iron, to hold 
until the riveters arrive for the permanent sewing. 
Five or six tons is the weight of ordinary pieces han- 




"ITS MASCOT KITTEN, CURLED UP THERE BY THE ASH-BOX." 

died by the traveler, but some pieces weigh twenty 
tons, and, on a pinch, forty tons could be managed, 
the weight of six elephants like Jumbo. Of course, 
when I say that the traveler "stitches" these pieces 
together, I really mean that the "traveler" gangs do 
this, for the big brute booms can only lift things and 
swing things ; the bolt-driving and end-fitting must be 
done by little men. 

When we arrived the "traveler" was bringing to one 
spot the massive parts of a cross-section in our arbor- 
way. It was a stretched-out iron W, flattened down 



190 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

between girders across top and bottom. This, we 
learned, was a "strut," and it weighed sixteen tons, 
and it would presently be lifted bodily overhead to 
span the roadway. We waited a full hour to see this 
thing done — to watch another stitch taken in the 
bridge; and it seems to me, as I think of it, that I can 
recall no hour when I saw so many perils faced with 
such indifference. 

First, the booms would drop down their clanking 
jaws and grip the chain-bound girders from little de- 
livery cars, then swing them around to the lifting-place 
at the farther end of the traveler. Now we under- 
stood what our friend down the way meant by "skip- 
ping along lively when the falls come at you." He 
meant this boom-tackle and its load as they sweep 
over the structure in blind, merciless force. And, in- 
deed, they did skip along, the bridge-men, as the trav- 
eler turned its arms this way and that, and several 
times I saw a man slip as he hurried, and barely save, 
himself. A single misstep might mean the crush of 
a ten-ton mass, or a plunge into space, or both. It 
seemed a pretty shivery choice. 

"One of our bovs got hit this morning," said a man. 

"Hit by the falls?" 

"Yes; he tried to dodge, but his foot caught some- 
how, and he got it hard right here." He touched his 
thigh. "It flattened him out, just over there where 
that man 's making fast the load." 

"Was he badly hurt?" 

"Pretty bad, I guess. He could n't get up, and we 
lowered him in a coal-box with a runner; that 's a 
single line. You see, it 's very easy to take a wrong 
step." 

Presently somebody yelled something, and this ma. 
moved away to his task; but we were joined almost 




RIDING UP ON AN EIGHTEEN-TON COLUMN. 



192 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

immediately by another bridge-man, who told us how 
they ride the big steel columns from the ground clear 
to the cap of the tower. Two men usually ride on a 
column, their duty being to keep her from bumping 
against the structure as she lifts, and then bolt her fast 
when she reaches the top. Of course, as a tower 
grows in height, these rides become more and more 
terrifying, so that some of the men who are equal to 
anything else draw back from riding up a column. 

These fears were justified just at the last on the 
New York tower, and a man named Jack McGreggor 
had an experience that might well have blanched his 
hair. They had reached the 325-foot level, and were 
placing the last lengths of column but one, and Mc- 
Greggor was riding up one of these lengths alone. It 
was a huge mass twenty-five feet long, square in sec- 
tion, and large enough to admit a winding ladder in- 
side. It weighed eighteen tons. As the overhead 
boom lifted the pendent length (with McGreggor 
astride) and swung it clear of the column it was to 
rest on, the foreman, watching there like a hawk, wig- 
gled his thumb to the signal-man on a platform below, 
who pulled four strokes on the bell, which meant 
"boom up" to the engine-man. So up came the boom, 
and in came the column, hanging now in true perpen- 
dicular, with McGreggor ready to slide down from his 
straddling seat for the bolting. 

Now the foreman flapped his hand palm down, and 
the signal-man was just about to jerk two bells, which 
means "lower your load," when rip — smash — tear! 
Far down below a terrible thing had happened : the 
frame of the engine had snapped right over the bear- 
ing, and out pulled the cable drum that was holding 
the strain of that eighteen-ton column, and down came 
the falls. It was just like an elevator breaking loose 



THE BRIDGE-BUILDER 193 

at the top of its shaft. The column started to fall ; 
there was nothing to stop it ; and then — and then a 
miracle was worked ; it must have been a miracle ; 
it is so extraordinary. That falling column struck 
squarely, end to end, on the solid column beneath it, 
rocked a little, righted itself, and stayed there ! Which 
was more than Jack McGreggor did, for he came slid- 
ing down so fast — he came with a wild, white face — 
that he all but knocked the foreman over; and the fore- 
man was white himself. And what that eighteen-ton 
column would have done to the bridge, and the boys 
on it, had it crashed down those three hundred and 
twenty-five feet, is still a subject of awed discussion. 

All this time a dozen men have been swarming over 
the strut, hammering bolts, tightening nuts, hitching 
fast the "falls," making sure that all parts are rigid 
and everything ready for the lifting. At the front of 
the traveler two foremen, "pushers" they are called, 
yell without ceasing : "Hey, Gus ! Hey ! Hey, Jimmie ! 
Put that winch in ! Slack away them falls ! What 
the mischief are you doing? Hey! Hey!" And' 
they shake their hands and dance on their toes, for 
all the world like a pair of mad auctioneers. 

The men work faster under this vigorous coaching. 
Four or five are stretched flat on their stomachs along 
the top girder, as many more cling to steep slanting 
braces, and some hang fast to the uprights, with legs 
twisted around them like Japanese pole-climbers. No 
matter what his position, every man plies a tool of 
some sort — wrench, chisel, or sledge, and presently all 
is ready. 

Now the niggerheads start with a pounding and 
sput ■ that make the bridge quiver. The big 

sp haul fast on the ropes, the falls stiffen, the 

1 ■ - < j eak, and with shouts from every one, the 



194 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

strut heaves and lifts and hangs suspended. The 
"pushers" yell at the niggerheads to stop. The men 
swarm over the load, studying every joint, then wave 
that all is well, and come sliding, twisting down just 
as the engines start again, all but two men, who sit at 
the ends and ride along with the hoist. Meantime the 
others are racing up the side frames, from slant to slant 
to the top of the truss, where they wait eagerly, yelling 
the while, at the points on either side, where pres- 
ently the strut-ends must be adjusted and then bolted 
fast. 

It seems like some mad school-boy game of romps. 
Now we '11 all swing over this precipice ! Whoop-la ! 
Now we '11 all run across this gulf ! Wow ! wow ! wow ! 
Every man in that scrambling crew is facing two 
deaths, or three deaths, and doing hard work besides. 
Look! There comes the strut up to its place, and 
nearly crushes Jimmie Dunn with its sharp edge, as a 
strut did crush another lad not so long ago. And see 
that man hang out in a noose of a rope, hang out over 
nothing, and drive in bolts. And see this fellow kick 
off on the free pulley-block and come sliding down. 
Hoooo ! And there are the others jumping at the falls 
after him, and coming down with a rush, laughing. 
Risking their lives? One would say they never 
thought of it. 

"Why, that 's nothing!'' said one of them; "we used 
to slide down the falls from the top of the tower. But 
you 've got to know the trick or the ropes '11 burn 
through your trousers. It 's a great slide, though." 

"Are n't you ever afraid of falling?" I asked a 
serious-faced young man who was running one of the 
niggerheads. 

"I '11 tell you how it is," said he; "we 're not afraid 
when a lot of us do a thing together, but each one 




ON THE "TRAVELER." HOISTING A STRUT. 



196 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

might be afraid to do it alone. In our hearts I guess 
we 're all afraid." 

"Ever have an accident yourself?" 

"No," he said, "but — " He hesitated, and then ex- 
plained that he had been standing near the day "Chick" 
Chandler fell from the Brooklyn tower. It had n't 
been a nice thing to see, and — 

Finally I got the story. Chandler, it seems, was the 
first man killed on the bridge, and he died for a jest. 
He was working that day on the one-hundred-and-ten- 
foot level ; he was an experienced man and counted sure 
of foot. It had begun to sprinkle, and the men were 
looking about for their rain-coats, when Chandler, in 
a spirit of mischief, started across a girder for an oil- 
skin that belonged to a comrade. And so interested 
was he in this little prank that he forgot prudence, per- 
haps forgot where he was, and the next second he was 
falling, and presently there was the shock of impact far 
below, and then a red No. i was branded on the ugly 
black bridge. 



Ill 



WHICH TELLS OF MEN WHO HAVE FALLEN 
FROM GREAT HEIGHTS 

THERE is this to note about falls from bridges, 
that the very short ones often kill as surely as the 
long ones. They told me of one case where a man fell 
eight feet and broke his neck, while other men have 
fallen from great heights and escaped. A workman 
of the Berlin Bridge Company, for instance, fell from 
a structure in New Hampshire, one hundred and 
twenty feet, and lived. And I myself saw Harry 
Fleager on the East River Bridge, New York, and 
from his own lips heard his remarkable experience. 
Fleager is to-day a sturdy, active young man, and 
when I saw him he was running a thumping nigger- 
head engine on the end-span. Nevertheless, it was 
only a few months since he had fallen ninety-seven feet 
smash down to a pile of bricks. 

"It happened this way," said he. "One of the big 
booms broke under its load just over where I was 
standing, and the tackle-block swung around and 
caught me back of the head. That knocked me off the 
false work, and I went straight down to the ground. 
Just to show you the force of my fall, sir, I struck a 
timber about thirty feet before I landed; it was eight 
inches wide and four inches thick, and I snapped it off 
without hardly slowing up. After that I lay for a 
week in the hospital with bruises, but there was n't a 
bone broken, and I 've been at work ever since." 

197 



198 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

Several times while I was seeking permission to go 
up on the structure I was treated to stories like this and 
to mild dissuasion. It was too dangerous a thing, they 
said, for a man to undertake lightly. And I did not 
succeed until I met the engineer in charge, Charles E. 
Bedell, a forceful, quiet-mannered man, who, after 
some talk, granted my request. He did not dwell so 
much on the danger as the others had, although he did 
say : "Of course you take all the risks." 

"Do you think they are very great?" I asked. 

"Not if you use ordinary caution and are not afraid." 

Fear was the fatal thing, he said, and he told me of 
men who simply cannot endure such heights. Every 
clay or two some new hand would start down the lad- 
ders almost before he had reached the top, and come 
into the office saying he could n't stand the job. 

"But you go ahead," said Mr. Bedell; "you '11 come 
through all right. Just take it easy and be careful." 
Then he handed me a permit. 






CAs*^£*-£* 



H-o^Si. 



^J2&^ C^ /uxLtee&jL 



We have seen how I fared on the bridge; let me 
show now what befell this brilliant young engineer 
a couple of months later, and observe how his own 
case illustrates the paralyzing effect of fear upon a 
man. For months he had gone over the structure 
daily, as sure of himself at those giddy heights as on 



THE BRIDGE-BUILDER 199 

the ground. He never took chances, and he never felt 
afraid. But one day a workman fell from far above 
him and was crushed to death right before his eyes, 
and this was more of a shock to him than he realized. 
' How much of a shock it had been was shown weeks 
later, Avhen the hour of peril came. It was a pleasant 
day in September, and the bridge was singing its busy 
song in the morning sunshine. The engineer in charge 
had made his round of inspection, and was standing 
idly on the false work under the end-span. He was 
just over the street, and could look down upon his 
own office, a hundred feet or so below. Every timber 
and girder here was familiar to him. Rumbling along 
on the trestle track came the big "traveler," its four 
booms groaning under their iron loads. The "trav- 
eler" came on slowly, as befits a huge thing weighing 
one hundred and fifty tons. The engineer was whit- 
tling a stick. The "traveler" came nearer, with one 
of its booms swinging toward Bedell, but lazily. He 
had plenty of time to step aside. One step to the 
right, one step to the left, one step forward was all 
he need take. Of course, he would not think of tak- 
ing a step backward, for there was destruction — there 
yawned the gulf. It was inconceivable to the man 
on the "traveler" that his chief, who knew all about 
everything, would take a step backward. 

Still the engineer in charge did not move. The 
boom swung nearer. Still he whittled at his stick. His 
thoughts were far away. The man on the "traveler" 
shouted, and Bedell looked up. Now he saw, and the 
sudden fear he had never known surged in his heart. 
He had still time to step aside, but his mind could not 
act. The boom was on him. Up went his right arm 
to clutch it, and back reeled his body. His right hand 
missed, his left hand caught the stringer as he fell, 



200 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

caught its sharp edge and held there by the fingers — 
the left-hand fingers — for five, six, seven seconds or 
so, legs swinging in the void. Down sprang the man 
on the "traveler," and leaped along the ties to his re- 
lief, and reached the spot to find the fingers gone, to 
see far below on the stones a broken, huddled heap 
that lay still. So died the man who had been kind to 
me (as they say he was kind to every one), and who 
had warned me to "take it easy and be careful." 

Despite the constant peril of their days, the nights 
of bridge-builders are often spent in gaiety. The 
habit of excitement holds them even in their leisure, 
and many a sturdy riveter has danced away the small 
hours and been on his swing at the tower-top betimes 
the next morning. They are whole-souled, frank- 
spoken young fellows (there are few old bridge-men), 
and to spend an evening at their club, on West Thirty- 
second Street, is a thing worth doing. 

On the street floor is a cafe, not to say saloon, where 
the walls are hung with churches and bridges and tow- 
ering structures, monuments to the skill of the builders 
who have passed this way. And if you will join a 
group at one of these tables and speak them fair you 
may hear enough tales of the lads who work aloft for 
many a writing. And up and down the stairs move 
lines of bridge-men, all restless, one would say, and 
some pass on crutches and some with arms in slings 
(there is a story in every cripple), and you hear that 
New York has half a dozen one-legged bridge-men 
still fairly active in service. It 's once a bridge-man 
always a bridge-man, for the life has its fascination, 
like the circus. 

As I sat in a corner one evening with Zimmer and 
Jimmie Dunn and some of the others, there came down 
from overhead a racket that almost drowned our busz 



THE BRIDGE-BUILDER 201 

of talk and the frequent ting of the bar register. The 
bridge-men were in vigorous debate over the question 
whether or not the interests of the craft call for more 
flooring on dangerous structures. Some said "yes," 
some "no," and said it with vehemence. More flooring 
meant less danger. That was all right, but less dan- 
ger meant more competition and less pay. So there 
you are, and the majority favored danger with a gen- 
erous wage. 

"What kind of men make bridge-men?" I inquired. 

"All kinds," said one of the group who was drink- 
ing birch-beer. "Some come out of machine-shops, 
some out of locomotive works, I was a 'shanty-jack.' ' 

"Lots of 'em come from farms," added another. 
"I know one fellow tried it who 'd been a tailor. Said 
he changed for his health." 

This struck the company as highly amusing. 

"There 's lots of 'em try it and quit," remarked 
Jimmie Dunn, who is one of the oldest and also one of 
the youngest men in the guild. I had seen him nearly 
killed a few days before by the sudden up-swing of a 
sixteen-ton strut. "I knew a telegraph-pole climber 
who said he did n't mind any old kind of a tower ; 
he 'd go up it all right and work there. Well, he got 
all he wanted the first morning. Came down white as 
that paper. Said he would n't stay up half an hour 
longer if they 'd give him the whole blamed bridge. 
Why. it gets us fellows dizzy once in a while." 

"I '11 bet it does," agreed the shanty-jack man. "I 
saw an old hand once start to ride up a barrel of water 
one hundred and seventy feet on a bridge over the St. 
Lawrence. The barrel was swung on a 'single run- 
ner,' and you ought to have seen it spin with his weight 
tipping it lopsided ! Ain't any bridge-man going could 
have kept his head there. 'T was a fool thing to do, 



202 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

and the only way this fellow got up alive was by drop- 
ping plumb into the barrel of water and shutting his 
eyes." 

"Talking about close calls," spoke up Zimmer, "I 
can beat that. It was out in Illinois. We were rivet- 
ing on a high building, where the roof came up in a 
steep slant from each side to a ridge at the top. There 
were about twenty of us on this roof, and the way 
we 'd work was in pairs, one man on one side and his 
partner on the other side, with a rope between 'em, 
reaching over the ridge, and the two men hung at the 
two ends, each one balancing the other, like two buck- 
ets down a well. We had to get up some scheme like 
that, or we could n't have stuck on the roof; it was 
too steep. 

"Well, that was all right as long as both men kept 
their weight on the rope, but you can see where one 
would be if the other happened to let go. He 'd be 
chasing down a nice little hill of corrugated iron on 
a sixty-degree slant, and then over the eaves for a 
hundred-and-ten-foot drop. It was n't any merry jest, 
you 'd better believe, but we did n't think much about 
it and riveted away, until one morning a fellow on my 
side got his foot out of the noose somehow, and began 
to slide down. Say, he was about as cool a man as 
I ever heard of. I '11 never forget how he sort of 
winked at me as he started, and what he said. 

" 'Going to blazes, I reckon,' said he. Those were 
his very words. And down he went; could n't stop 
himself, and we could n't help him, it all happened so 
quick. He got to the eaves, his feet went over, he was 
just plunging into space when his overalls caught on a 
rivet that somebody had left sticking up there. And 
there he stuck. Then he said, with just the same com- 
ical look, 'Saved by a miracle, by thunder !' 




WALKING A GIRDER TWO HUNDRED FEET IN AIR. 



204 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

"Must have been a double miracle, for the man on 
the other side started to drop, too, when the rope 
slacked, and he 'd have been killed sure if a knot in 
the rope had n't happened to catch under a piece of 
loose iron on the ridge. Say. it 's that kind of busi- 
ness whitens out a man's hair." 

"It 's a bridge-man's fate settles these things, 
friends," commented another member of th£ group. 
And he instanced a case where this fate had followed 
in cruel pursuit of two brothers named Johnson, 
Michael and Dan, good men both on the girders. Dan, 
it seems, had been crushed by a swinging load on a 
West Virginia bridge, and lay crippled in the hospital, 
only the wreck of a man, whereupon Michael, zealous 
in his brother's cause, had followed the work over 
into Kentucky, where a bridge was building across 
the river at Covington. His purpose was to bring suit 
against the company for the injury clone to Dan. 

"And here came the fateful part of it, for scarcely 
had Michael set foot upon the structure — he had cer- 
tainly not been ten minutes upon it — when the false 
work gave way and two iron spans, unsupported 
now, tipped slowly, then smashed down into the river, 
carrying with them ruin and death. In this catas- 
trophe were numbered some dozens of wounded and 
killed, and among the latter was Michael Johnson, 
found under the river standing upright in a tangle 
of wreckage, caught and held by the bridge-man's 
fate." 

Then another man told the story of a falling bridge 
that thrilled me more than this one, although there was 
in it no loss of life. I always feel that a man who 
faces death unflinchingly for a fairly long time shows 
greater heroism, even though death be driven back, 
than another man who suffers some sudden taking off 



THE BRIDGE-BUILDER 205 

with no choice left him. This bridge was building 
at White River Junction, Vermont, over the upper 
waters of the Connecticut. There was a single iron 
span reaching two hundred feet between piers of ma- 
sonry, and everything was ready to swing her off the 
false work except the driving of a few iron pins. And 
a bridge swung is a bridge practically finished, so it 
was merely a matter of hours to put the contractors 
at ease of mind against any dangers of the torrent. 
Meantime the dangers were there, for heavy rains had 
fallen and angered the river with a gorge of mountain 
streams. 

At five o'clock of an afternoon the engineer in 
charge saw T that a crisis was approaching. The waters 
were sweeping down runaway logs in fiercer and fiercer 
bombardment, and it was a question if the false work 
could hold against them. And for the time being, 
until morning' surely, the false work must carry the 
span. If the false work went the span would go, and 
the bridge would be destroyed. 

So the chief engineer ordered all hands down on 
scows and rafts, which were straightway jammed close 
against the false work by the current. Down on these 
lurching platforms went seventeen bridge-men, and set 
to work with iron-shod pike-poles, spearing the plung- 
ing logs as they came by and swinging them out 
through the bents of false work, down roaring lanes 
of water twenty feet wide between the legs of scaffold- 
ing. If these could be protected from the logs, the 
bridge might be saved ; if they could not be protected, 
the bridge was doomed. It was the strength and 
skill of the pike-pole lads against the fury of the 
river. 

For nine hours the battle lasted, and all this time 
the bridge-men worked wonders down in the black 



2o6 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

night, with rain beating on them in torrents and the 
logs coming faster and harder as the hours passed. 
Every man in the crew realized that the false work 
might give way at any moment, for the whole structure 
was groaning and shivering as they swung against it, 
and they knew that if it went at all it would go as one 
piece, without a moment's warning. And that would 
mean sudden death in the river under the crush of a 
broken bridge. Yet no man shirked his duty, and 
long after midnight they were there on the scows 
still, fighting the logs with bridge-men's grit and the 
comfort of steaming hot coffee — well, we may call it 
coffee. 

But it was a hopeless fight now; the engineer saw 
this, and at two o'clock ordered all hands off the scows 
and back to the shore. There is a point beyond which 
you cannot allow men to go on offering their lives. 
And scarcely five minutes later — indeed, the last man 
was barely off the structure, so our friend declared, 
and he was one of the seventeen — the false work ripped 
loose and was swept away, and the iron span crashed 
down into the furious flood. 

After this Zimmer described his sensations in a fall 
of one hundred and thirty-five feet from the eighth 
story of a skyscraper they were putting up out West. 
He was sitting on an upright column of the steel skele- 
ton, waiting to pin fast a cross-beam, when -a girder 
swung over from the other side and struck him. It 
weighed a matter of six tons. Down went Zimmer, 
and, as he dropped, he caught at a granite block rest- 
ing loose there and toppled it over with him. And the 
thought in his mind as he fell was that here was an 
interesting illustration of what he had learned at school 
about a heavy body falling faster than a light one, 
for although he had a start of eight feet on the granite 



THE BRIDGE-BUILDER 207 

block, it passed him one story down, and smashed 
ahead through a staging that might have saved him. 
Then, as the stone sheered off, he estimated, did Zim- 
mer (falling still), that its weight was about fifteen 
hundred pounds. Then he himself smashed through 
two stagings and caught at a rope, which burned 
through his gloves, and the next thing he knew was 
days later at the hospital, where somebody was bend- 
ing over him saying : "Will you please tell me about 
your sensations coming down?" "And there was a 
newspaper reporter trying to interview me," said Zim- 
mer, "which is what you might call rushing things." 

"Tell ye a fall that stirred us boys all right," said 
another man. "It was in the big shaft at Niagara 
Falls. You know where they send electricity all over 
the State. The shaft was a hundred and eighty feet 
deep, and they used to lower us down in a boat swung 
from an iron cable. Well, one clay the drum slipped 
and let the whole business fall free with five of us in 
the boat. We went clear down one hundred and sev- 
enty feet, and the boat fell away under us just like that 
granite block of Zimmer's, and there we were hanging 
fast to the corner chains and every man of us expect- 
ing to die. But somehow the engineer got his brakes 
on just as we were ten feet above bottom, and blamed if 
we did n't land fairly easy without a man hurt. Just 
the same, we 'd looked over our lives pretty well in 
those few seconds." 

After this came tragic memories from other men. 
One recalled the terrible wreck of the Cornwall bridge 
over the St. Lawrence. Another the disaster at Louis- 
ville, when two great iron spans, reaching a thousand 
feet, went down into the Ohio, with false work, "trav- 
eler," and sixty-five men, of whom only four escaped. 
"And one of the four, sir, was on the "traveler," two 



2o8 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

hundred feet above the water, when she went down. 
Never had a scratch." 

So the talk ran on, and I came away with mingled 
feelings of wonder and admiration and sadness. Here 
are men who leave their families every morning with 
full knowledge that before nightfall disaster may smite 
them, as they have seen it smite their comrades. Why, 
one asks, do they keep to such a career ? And if they 
believe, as apparently they do, that bridge-men are 
fated to violent death, why do they not leave this work 
and seek a safer calling? 

I suppose the same reason holds them to the bridge 
that holds the diver to his suit, the climber to his stee- 
ple, each one of us to his particular path — it is so 
hard to find another. And then there is the lash of 
pressing need, the home to keep, and no time for ex- 
periment. Yet there are the hard facts always, that no 
insurance company will take a risk upon these lives, 
that bridge contractors are not philanthropists nor 
issuers of pensions, and that if a man fall from the 
structure, say at 11.50 a.m., his pay stops short not 
at twelve o'clock, but at ten minutes before twelve. 
Which is probably excellent business, although it seems 
poor humanity. 



THE FIREMAN 

i 

WHEREIN WE SEE A SLEEPING VILLAGE SWEPT 

BY A RIVER OF FIRE AND THE BURNING 

OF A FAMOUS HOTEL 

I WILL first tell a story, fresh in my memory, about 
a New Jersey village lost in the hills back of Lake 
Hopatcong, a charming, sleepy little village that 
reaches along a stream fringed with butterball-trees 
and looks contentedly out of its valley up the steep 
wooded hill that rises before it. Nobody in Glen Gard- 
ner cares much what there is in the world beyond that 
hill. 

The general attitude of Glen Gardner toward prog- 
ress is shown well enough by this, that the village could 
never see the use of a fire department. They never 
had one, and never proposed to ; other people's houses 
might get on fire ; theirs never did. As a matter of 
fact, nobody could remember when there had been a 
fire in Glen Gardner, unless it was Aunt Ann Fritts, 
who was eighty-eight years old, and remembered back 
farther than was necessary. 

This was the case on a certain drizzling Sunday 
in March of the new-century year, when, at 6.30 a.m., 
the world beyond the hill intruded itself upon Glen 
Gardner's peacefulness in such strange and sudden 
fashion that old Mrs. Bergstresser collapsed from the 
shock. What made it worse was the fact that there had 

14 209 



THE FIREMAN 211 

been a dance the night before at Farmer Apgar's, and 
half-past six found most of the village dozing comfort- 
ably. There was really nothing to do before church- 
time. So they all thought, at least, little suspecting 
that even now, as they slept, a long oil-train was puff- 
ing up the steep grade from Easton, bringing sixty 
cars loaded with crude petroleum and trouble. 

On came the oil-train, its front engine panting as 
the drivers slipped, and the "pusher" back of the 
caboose shouldering up the load with snorts of impa- 
tience. Ouf ! The front of the train climbs over the 
ridge at Hampton Junction, half a mile back of Glen 
Gardner, where the Jersey Central tracks reach their 
highest point. Now they are all right. There is a 
long down grade ahead for three miles. The pusher 
gives a final shove at the rear end, and cuts loose, glad 
to be rid of the job. The men in the caboose wave 
good-by to the fireman and engineer as they drop 
away. 

Hello! What 's that jerk? They look out and see 
the last oil-car just clearing the divide. It 's nothing ; 
they 're over now; they 're running faster. Queer 
place, this ! There 's a spring here with two streams 
that part in the middle like a woman's hair; one goes 
down the east side, the other down the west side. 
What? Broken in two? 

The caboose crew start to run forward; a brakeman 
on the front half starts to run back. Thirty-seven 
cars behind the engine a coupling has snapped, and 
the train is taking the down grade in two sections : 
twenty-three loaded oil-cars are running away, and a 
million gallons of oil are chasing two million gallons 
down a mountain-side ! 

Everything now depends upon the brakeman on the 
forward section. He is the only man who can judge 



212 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

the danger, and signal the engineer what to do. The 
engineer does not even know that anything is wrong. 
It is plainly the brakeman's business to keep the front 
half of the train out of the way of the rear half. They 
must go faster, faster as the runaway cars gain on 
them. Any one can see that it is undesirable to have 
two million gallons of oil struck by a million gallons 
coming at forty miles an hour. 

Yet the brakeman does the wrong thing (no man 
can be sure how he will act in imminent peril) ; the 
brakeman signals the engineer to stop. Perhaps he 
planned a gradual slow-up to block the flying section 
gently ; perhaps he did not realize how fast the runa- 
way was coming. Most likely he lost his head en- 
tirely, as better men have done in less serious crises. 
At any rate, the front section presently drew up with 
grinding brakes on the ledge of track that stretches 
along the cheek of the mountain just over the slope 
where the slumbering village lay, not five feet from 
Carling's warehouse, beyond which were the coal- 
yards and the wooden houses of Glen Gardner, the 
post-office, the hardware store, and the main street. 
Of all places for that train to stop, this was the 
worst. 

It was a matter of seconds now until the crash came, 
and on this followed a shattering blast that shook the 
valley and hill, and brought the village to its feet in 
a daze of fear. Four oil-cars were smashed in the 
wreck and hurled across the tracks for the rear cars 
to pile up on. And straightway there was a gushing- 
oil-well here, out of which in the first ten seconds came 
an explosion with the noise of cannon, that showered 
burning oil over fields and trees and shingled house- 
tops, while a fire column shot up fifty feet in the air 
and besran its fierce feeding on the broken tanks. And 




#z~ 



"SNYDER, WHITE AS A GHOST, RACED AHEAD OF THE FIRE.' 



214 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

out of this fire fountain came a smoking fire river, that 
rolled down the hill toward the village. 

At this moment, Joe Snyder, who had not gone to 
the dance the night before, and was doomed now to 
the early worm's fate, had just put his key in the door 
of the butcher-shop. He never turned, the key, nor 
saw it again, nor saw the butcher-shop again. What 
he did see was a roaring torrent of oil sweeping down 
the street and blazing fifteen feet high as it came. 
And the picture next presented when Snyder, white 
as a ghost, raced down the sidewalk ahead of the fire, 
will stay long in the memory of those who saw it from 
their windows. 

But this was no time for looking at pictures out of 
windows; there were other things to be done, and 
done quickly. Never did fire descend so swiftly upon 
a village. Even as the startled sleepers stared in 
fright, houses all about them burst into flames like 
candles on a Christmas tree. Now the warehouse is 
burning, and the sheds across the tracks; and there 
goes the hardware store; and there goes the carpen- 
ter's shop ; and now the fire-stream rolls through Main 
Street, and licks up the Reeves house on one corner 
and Vliet's store on the other. Then the drug-store 
goes, and Carling's store and Rinehart's restaurant. 
Trees are burning, fences are burning, the very streets 
are burning, and men see fire rolling across their front 
yards like drifting snow. 

I do not purpose to follow the incidents of this fire 
and the several explosions, nor show how the village 
fought against it vainly, damming up fiery oil-streams 
and turning their courses, toiling at bucket-lines, and 
spreading blistering walls with soaked carpets. The 
point is that these efforts alone would never have 
availed, and Glen Gardner would speedily have lain 



216 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

in ashes, had not fire-engines from Sommerville and 
Washington been hurried to the spot. And even as it 
was, a section of the village was wiped away in clean- 
licked ruins, which stood for many a day as a grim re- 
minder that the only safety against fires in these times 
lies in being able to fight fires well. 

Which brings me, of course, to the modern fire de- 
partment and the men who risk their lives as a matter 
of daily routine to protect their fellow-men. I will 
begin with some incidents of one particular fire that 
happened in New York on St. Patrick's Day, 1899. 
It was a pleasant afternoon, and Fifth Avenue was 
crowded with people gathered to watch the parade. 
A gayer, pleasanter scene it would have been hard to 
find at three o'clock, or a sadder one at four. 

The Ancient Order of Hibernians, coming along 
with bands and banners, were nearing Forty-sixth 
Street, when suddenly there sounded hoarse shouts and 
the angry clang of fire-gongs, and down Forty-sev- 
enth Street came Hook and Ladder 4 on a dead run, 
and swung into Fifth Avenue straight at the pompous 
Hibernians, who immediately became badly scared 
Irishmen and took to their heels. But the big ladders 
went no farther. They were needed here, oh, so badly 
needed ; for the Windsor Hotel was on fire — the fa- 
mous Windsor Hotel at Fifth Avenue and Forty-sev- 
enth Street. It was on fire, far gone with fire before 
ever the engines were called ; and the reason was that 
everybody supposed that of course somebody had sent 
the alarm. And so they all watched the fire, and 
waited for the engines, ten, fifteen minutes, and by that 
time a great column of flame was roaring up the ele- 
vator-shaft, and people on the roof, in their madness, 
were jumping down to the street. Then some sane 
citizen went to a fire-box and rang the call, and within 



THE FIREMAN 217 

ninety seconds Engine 65 was on the ground. And 
after her came Engines 54 and 21. But there was no 
making up that lost fifteen minutes. The fire had 
things in its teeth now, and three, four, five alarms 
went out in quick succession. Twenty-three engines 
had their streams on that fire in almost as many min- 
utes. And the big fire-tower came from Thirty-sixth 
Street and Ninth Avenue, and six hook-and-ladder 
companies came. 

Let us watch Hook and Ladder 21 for a moment. 
She was the mate of the fire-tower, and the rush of her 
galloping horses was echoing up the avenue just as 
Battalion Chief John Binns made out a woman in a 
seventh-story window on the Forty-sixth Street side, 
where the fire was raging fiercely. The woman was 
holding a little dog in her arms, and it looked as if she 
was going to jump. The chief waved her to stay 
where she was, and, running toward 21 as she plunged 
along, motioned toward Forty-sixth Street. Where- 
upon the tiller-man at his back wheel did a pretty piece 
of steering, and even as they swung the long truck 
in the turn the crew began hoisting the big ladder. 
Such a thing is never done, for the swaying of that 
ten-ton mass might easily upset the truck ; but every 
second counted here, and they took the chance. 

As they drew along the curb, Fireman McDermott 
sprang up the slowly rising ladder, and two men came 
behind with scaling-ladders, for they saw that the 
main ladder would never reach the woman. Five 
stories is what it did reach, and then McDermott, 
standing on the top round, smashed one of the scaling- 
ladders through a sixth-story window, and climbed on, 
smashed the second scaling-ladder through a seventh- 
story window, and five seconds later had the woman in 
his arms. 





USE OF THE SCALING LADDERS. 



THE FIREMAN 219 

To carry a woman down the front of a burning 
building on scaling-ladders is a matter of regular rout- 
ine for a fireman, like jumping from a fourth story 
down to a net, or making a bridge of his body. It is 
part of the business. But to have one foot in the air 
reaching for the lower rung of a swaying, flimsy thing, 
and to feel another rung break under you and your 
struggling burden, and to fall two feet and catch 
safely, that is a thing not every fireman couhi do; but 
McDermott did it, and he brought the woman un- 
harmed to the ground — and the dog, too. 

Almost at the same moment, the crowd on Forty- 
seventh Street thrilled in admiration of a rescue feat 
even more perilous. On the roof, screaming in ter- 
ror, was Kate Flannigan, a servant, swaying over the 
cornice, on the point of throwing herself down. Then 
out of a top-floor window crept a little fireman, and 
stood on the fire-escape, gasping for air. Then he 
reached in and dragged out an unconscious woman 
and lowered her to others, and was just starting down 
himself when yells from the street made him look up, 
and he saw Kate Flannigan. She was ten feet above 
him, and he had no means of reaching her. 

The crowd watched anxiously, and saw the little 
fireman lean back over the fire-escape, saw him motion 
and shout something to the woman. And then she 
crept over the cornice edge, hung by her hands for a 
second, and dropped into the fireman's arms. It is n't 
every big strong man who could catch a sizable woman 
in a fall like that and hold her, but this stripling did 
it, because he had the nerve and knew how. And that 
made another life saved. 

By this time flames were breaking out of every 
story from street to roof. It seemed impossible to go 
on with the rescue work ; yet the men persisted, even 



220 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

on the Fifth Avenue front, bare of fire-escapes. They 
used the long extension ladders as far as they could, 
and then "scaled it" from window to window. Here 
it was that William Clark of Hook and Ladder 7 made 
the rescues that gave him the Bennett medal — took 
three women out of seventh-story windows when it 
was like climbing over furnace mouths to get there. 
And one of these women he reached only by working 
his way along narrow stone ledges for three windows, 
and back the same way to his ladder with the woman 
on his shoulders. Even so it is likely he would have 
failed in this last effort had not Edward Ford come 
part way along the ledges to meet and help him. 

Meantime Fireman Kennedy of Engine 23 had res- 
cued an old lady from the sixth floor; and Joseph 
Kratchovil of Hook and Ladder 2 had carried out 
Mrs. Leland, wife of the proprietor, from deadly peril 
on the fifth floor ; and Frank Tissier of Hook and Lad- 
der 4 had found a family named Wells — father, 
mother, and daughter — in a blazing room, and borne 
them out, with his own clothes burning, to the arms of 
Brennan and Sweeney, who were waiting for him in 
a fury of fire at the top of the eighty-five-foot exten- 
sion ladder. 

And Andrew Fitzgerald, also of Hook and Ladder 
4, but off on sick-leave with pneumonia, had shown 
the true fireman spirit as he came from the doctors. 
His instructions were to go home and stay there. He 
was not on duty at all. He was scarcely strong enough 
to be out of bed, but when he heard that there were 
lives in peril down the avenue he forgot everything, 
and ran to the place of danger. There was need of 
him here, and, sick-leave or not, pneumonia or not, he 
would do what he could. What he did was to carry 
out the last ones taken alive from the ill-fated hotel — 



THE FIREMAN 221 

three women whom he bore in his arms from the fourth 
floor through roaring hallways, then up a fire-escape, 
then back into the building, with the flames singeing 
him, and a shattering blast of exploding gas pursuing 
him, and finally out on a balcony whence, with the 
help of Policeman Harrigan, he got them over safely 
to an adjoining housetop. No wonder the Bonner 
medal was awarded him later for conspicuous courage. 



II 



WHAT BILL BROWN DID IN THE GREAT 
TARRANT FIRE 

THE great test for Fire-engine 29 and her crew, the 
test of life or death that firemen wait years for 
(to see what stuff is in them), came of a mild autumn 
afternoon, not soon to be forgotten by men who lunch 
down City Hall way, by men who swarm in the stone 
hives of Chambers Street and Greenwich Street and 
Washington Street. This was the day when inno- 
cent, wholesome chlorate of potash (excellent for 
colds) showed what it can do when you take it by the 
ton with a pinch of fire. This was the day of the 
great explosions, when it rained red-hot stones and 
blazing timbers, when whole blocks of lower Manhat- 
tan shivered with the concussion. This was Tarrant's 
day, October 29, 1900. 

It all started smoothly enough, with brass gongs 
tapping out deliberate 62's, at which the big horses 
in most engine-houses stamped their displeasure, for 
62 meant nothing to them — at least not on the first call. 
But it was great business for Harry and Nigger and 
Baby, the two blacks and the gray that pull old 29, and 
there they were at the first tap, breasting the rubber- 
bound stall chains as if to hurry up laggard electricity, 
which presently shot its sparks and loosed their fas- 
tenings. 

Now, down drop the stall chains, and the horses, 
pounding over the tiles, crowd up three abreast ahead 



THE FIREMAN 223 

of the engine. Down drop the crew, silently, swiftly, 
sliding from ceiling to floor like so many blue-shirted 
ghosts. And click, click, its traces up and collars off 
the frames, and snap, snap, until the last hook holds. 

"H'm," says Baby, as the thick wheels start, "six 
seconds ; might have been worse." 

"We '11 strike the curb in eight and a half!" snorts 
Nigger, as the doors swing wide and they bang into 
Chambers Street. 

Out into Chambers Street they go, with Johnnie 
Marks driving and Bill Brown jamming blazing waste 
into her fire-box, where wood and oil do the rest. 
On the back steps rides Captain Devanny, steadying 
himself by the coal-box, scowling under his helmet, 
and jerking fast on the alarm-cord as they swing into 
Greenwich Street. There is the fire just ahead, cor- 
ner of Warren Street, nasty black smoke choking 
back the crowd. And here comes the hose-wagon, 
clanging and rumbling at their heels. 

"It 's first water for us, Bill," said Devanny. 

"There 's drugs and stuff in there," said Bill. 

Then they fell to work — as firemen do. 

"When the first explosion came," said Captain De- 
vanny, telling the story weeks afterward, "I was in- 
side the building, up one flight, at the bottom of a 
well of fire. McArthur and Buckley were with me, 
playing a stiff stream to protect the back windows. 
There 's where people in the building had to run to, 
men and girls; we could see 'em crowding on the bal- 
conies over Bishop's Alley, and we wanted to give 'em 
a chance on the fire-escapes. You see, a red-hot lad- 
der is n't much use to anybody. 

"Well, they got down, every soul of 'em, but by 
that time big chunks of fire were dropping all around 
us, anc ir helmets were crumpling and our clothes 



■■,-; 




A HOT PLACE. 



THE FIREMAN 225 

were burning. Besides that, we kept hearing little ex- 
plosions overhead, louder than the fire crackle, louder 
than pistol shots, and when you hear those in a drug- 
house you don't feel any too good. I went to the 
front, and saw fire breaking out everywhere on the 
fourth and fifth floors. Then I knew it was all up, 
and ran back to order the boys out. On the stairs I 
met Gillon, and was just yelling, 'Save yourselves!' 
when the crash came. It was like cannon, sir, and 
sounded bzzzzzszz in my ears for a long time, as I 
lay in the wreck, with tongues of blue flames licking 
down over me. I 'd been blown clean off the second- 
floor landing and dropped in the hallway, twenty feet 
back from the door. McArthur and Gillon were down 
the elevator shaft, where they 'd jumped. Nobody 
dared lift a head, for a cyclone of fire was all over us." 
It is not my purpose to detail the sufferings and 
final rescue of these flame-bound men. They had 
some vivid glimpses of death and some cruel burns, but 
firemen count these nothing, nor is McArthur' s act in 
turning back through fire to save a fallen comrade 
(Merron) more than ordinary fireman's pluck, nor is 
Devanny's experience when caught in the second ex- 
plosion and blown through a shop on Washington 
Street more than an ordinary hazard of the business. 
Indeed, this Tarrant fire should have but little of my 
attention were there not something in it beyond noise 
and house-smashing. There was this thing in it, over- 
looked by newspaper reports, yet vastly important, 
the behavior of Bill Brown, to whom, as a represen- 
tative, one may say, of engine crew 29, came the great 
test I spoke of, the rare test which nothing but the 
highest courage can satisfy. All firemen have cour- 
age, but it cannot be known until the test how many 
have this particular kind — Bill Brown's kind, 
is 



226 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

And the odd part of it is that what he did seems a 
little thing, and it took only a minute to do, and it 
saved no life and made no difference whatever in the 
outcome of the fire, yet to the few who know — or 
care — it stands in the memories of the department as 
a fine and unusual bit of heroism. 

What happened was this : Engine 29, pumping and 
pounding her prettiest, stood at the northwest corner 
of Greenwich and Warren streets, so close to the blaz- 
ing drug-house that Driver Marks thought it was n't 
safe there for the three horses, and led them away. 
That was fortunate, but it left Brown alone, right 
against the cheek of the fire, watching his boiler, stok- 
ing in coal, keeping his steam-gage at 75. As the fire 
gained chunks of red-hot sandstone began to smash 
down on the engine. Brown ran his pressure up to 
80, and watched the door anxiously where the boys 
had gone in. 

Then the explosion came, and a blue flame, wide as 
a house, curled its tongues half-way across the street, 
enwrapping engine and man, setting fire to the ele- 
vated railway station overhead, or such wreck of it 
as the shock had left. < Bill Brown stood by his engine, 
with a wall of fire before him and a sheet of fire above 
him. He heard quick footsteps on the pavements, and 
voices, that grew fainter and fainter, crying : "Run for 
your lives !" He heard the hose-wagon horses some- 
where back in the smoke go plunging away, mad with 
fright and their burns. He was alone with the fire, 
and the skin was hanging in shreds on his hands, face, 
and neck. Only a fireman knows how one blast of 
flame can shrivel up a man, and the pain over the 
bared surfaces was — well, there is no pain worse than 
that of fire scorching in upon the quick flesh seared 
by fire. 



THE FIREMAN 227 

Here, I think, was a crisis to make a very brave man 
quail. Bill Brown knew perfectly well why every one 
was running; there was going" to be another explosion 
in a couple of minutes, maybe sooner, out of this hell 
in front of him. And the order had come for every 
man to save himself, and every man had done it, ex- 
cept the lads inside. And the question was, Should he 
run or should he stay and die? It was tolerably cer- 
tain that he would die if he stayed. On the other 
hand, the boys of old 29 were in there. Devanny and 
McArthur, and Gillon and Merron, his friends, his 
chums : he 'd seen them drag the hose in through that 
door — there it was now, a long, throbbing snake of it 
— and they had n't come out. Perhaps they were 
dead. Yes, but perhaps they were n't. If they were 
alive, they needed water now more than they ever 
needed anything before. And they could n't get water 
if he quit his engine. 

Bill Brown pondered this a long time, perhaps four 
seconds ; then he fell to stoking in coal, and he 
screwed her up another notch, and he eased her run- 
ning parts with the oiler. Explosion or not, pain or 
not, alone or not, he was going to stay and make that 
engine hum. He had done the greatest thing a man 
can do — had offered his life for his friends. 

It is pleasant to know that this sacrifice was averted. 
A quarter of a minute or so before the second and ter- 
rible explosion, Devanny and his men came staggering 
from the building. Then it was that Merron fell, and 
McArthur checked his flight to save him. Then it 
was, but not until then, that Bill Brown left Engine 
29 to her fate (she was crushed by the falling walls), 
and ran for his life with his comrades. He had 
waited for them, he had stood the great test. 

It were easy to multiply stories of the firemen, 



228 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

stories of the captains, stories of the chiefs — there is 
no end to them. However many may be told or writ- 
ten, they are but fragments of fragments. New York 
has one hundred and thirty-six engine companies, 
forty hook-and-ladder companies, besides the volun- 
teers on Staten Island, and there is not one of these 
but has its proud record of courage and self-sacrifice. 
Other lives show bravery for gain, bravery for show, 
bravery for sport ; these show bravery for the public 
good and for no other reason — unselfish bravery. 
Think what the firemen do ! They give up regular 
sleep, they give up home life, they bear every expo- 
sure, they face death in many forms as a matter of 
daily routine, they never refuse an order, lead where it 
may (such a case is practically unknown), and they do 
all this for modest pay and scant glory. Three or four 
dollars a day will cover their earnings, and as for the 
glory, what is it? For some a medal, a tattered paper 
with roll-of-honor mention, a picture in the newspa- 
pers ; for most of them nothing. Yet they are cheerful, 
happy men. Why? I have wondered about this. 

Shall we think of firemen as braver than other men, 
as finer or more devoted? No and yes. I should say 
that most of them, to start with, had no such supe- 
riority, but came into the department (usually by op- 
portunity or drift) out of unpromising conditions, 
came in quite as selfish and timorous, quite as human 
as the ordinary citizens. And the life did the rest. 
The life changed them, made them braver and better. 
Why? Because it is a brave, unselfish life, and no 
man can resist it. Put a convict in the fire department 
and he will become an honest man — or leave. It 's 
like changing scamps into heroes on the battle-field, 
only these battles of hose and ax are all righteous bat- 
tles to save life, to avert loss and suffering. In the 






THE FIREMAN 229 

whole business of fighting fires there is no place for a 
mean or a base motive, and can be none. Therefore, 
meanness and baseness go out of fashion just as whin- 
ing goes out of fashion on a football team. It 's the 
fashion among firemen to do fine things. 

Let me give a further instance to show what this fire 
department fashion does for men at the very top — for 
battalion chiefs and deputy chiefs and the chief him- 
self. It swings them into line like men in the ranks. 
With the chance to work less, they find themselves 
working harder. With orders to take from no one, 
they assume voluntarily a severer duty than any man 
would put upon them. And this even if power has 
come through the way of politics, through influence 
or scheming. Let the most spoils-soaked veteran be- 
come chief of a city fire department and I believe we 
should see him, in spite of himself, forgetting his 
pocket-stuffing principles, and seeking the heroic goal, 
though it kill him. Which it probably would. As a 
matter of fact, New York has never had a chief who 
did not work harder than his men, and spare himself 
less than he spared his men. 

Take our present chief, Edward F. Croker, the 
youngest man who ever held this place. Let me run 
over his twenty-four hours, from eight in the evening, 
when he goes on night duty at the Great Jones Street 
engine-house. From now until daylight he will cover 
personally some two hundred stations on the first alarm 
— that is, everything from Twenty-third Street to the 
Battery, the region of greatest danger. And on the 
second or third alarm he will cover the whole of Man- 
hattan Island. That means answering every night 
from two to a dozen calls scattered over a great area. 
It means a pair of horses (Dan and John, usually) 
and driver clean worn out when morning comes. And 



230 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

it means to the chief, besides physical fatigue, an ex- 
hausting responsibility in quickly judging each fire 
and outlining the way of fighting it. 

Almost a day's work this, one would say, but it is 
only a beginning. However broken his rest, the chief 
is up at seven in the morning — and note that what sleep 
he gets, three, four, five hours, is at an engine-house, 
not at his home — and by nine he is at headquarters, in 
Sixty-seventh Street, ready for a hard morning trans- 
acting business for the department, doing as much 
work as a merchant in his counting-room. This until 
one o'clock. 

Then no luncheon (all fire chiefs are two-meal men), 
but off for a four-hours' spin behind Kitty and Belle, 
his daylight team, driving from station to station for 
the work of inspection, holding the reins himself for 
arm exercise, seeing with his own eyes how the work 
is going, holding every man to his duty. Studying 
the city, too, as he goes about, noting its growth and 
changes from the view-point of a fire expert, detecting 
weak points, bad streets, defective structures, fixing in 
mind the danger spots, here oil, there lumber, yonder 
paint or chemicals, and planning always for the de- 
fense. 

After this inspection tour comes the only time in the 
day when the chief is not on duty, an hour and a half 
or two hours, when he gets a glimpse of his family and 
eats his dinner. Even then the fire buggy waits out- 
side, and many a time this brief home stay is cut short 
and off goes the chief, dropping knife and fork, to 
answer a third alarm. There is some perversity about 
fires, so his wife and children think, that makes more 
of them start between six and eight in the evening 
(this is really a fact) than at any other period of 
the day. 



232 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

So here we have a chief who actually holds himself 
ready for hardest service twenty-two hours in every 
twenty-four, who seldom knows a night's unbroken 
rest, who never takes a day off — not even Sundays or 
holidays, but uses these for longer inspection tours, 
driving forty or fifty miles of a Christmas day over 
Long Island or out into Queens County, or up through 
the Westchester region. 

And he is never ill, and he never complains ! 

To watch the chief at a big fire is a thing worth 
doing, though not easy to do, for he moves about con- 
stantly, up-stairs and down-stairs, from roof to roof, 
from engine to engine, in danger like his men, not 
sending his orders merely, but following after to ob- 
serve their execution. "I expect each of my captains," 
he told me one day, "to know the location and general 
condition of every alleyway, every stairway, every 
hydrant, every fire-escape in his section. When I get to 
a fire the captain must tell me what I want to know, 
and do it quick. Will we find water in there behind 
the smoke? Is there a back door at the end of that 
passage? How about the balconies? Where does 
this lane between the houses come out? And a dozen 
other things. If you want to fight fires well you must 
know the ground as if you lived on it." 



Ill 



HERE WE VISIT AN ENGINE-HOUSE AT NIGHT 
AND CHAT WITH THE DRIVER 

THERE is something strange and solemn about an 
engine-house at night, like the stillness of a 
church or the hush of a drowsing menagerie. You 
are filled with a sense of impending danger, which is 
symbolized everywhere : in the boots ranged at bunk- 
sides of sighing sleepers, in the brass columns, smooth 
as glass, that reach up through manholes in the floor, 
and at which the fire crew leap, half drunk with fa- 
tigue ; in the engine, purring at the double doors 
(steam always at 25 in the boiler), with tongues and 
harness lifted for the spring; in the big gong which 
watches under the clock (and the clock watches, too), 
a tireless yellow eye, that seems to be ever saying, 
"Shall I strike? Shall I strike?" And the clock ticks 
back, "Wait, wait," or "Now, now." That is what 
you feel chiefly in an engine-house at night — the in- 
tense, quiet watchfulness. Even the horses seem to be 
watching with the corner of an eye as they munch 
their feed. 

I counsel a man, perhaps a woman, weary of the 
old evening things, the stupid show, the trivial talk, 
the laughter without mirth, the suppers without nour- 
ishment, to try an hour or two at an engine-house, mak- 
ing friends with the fireman on guard (it may be the 
driver of a chief, as happened to me), and see if he 
does n't walk back home with a gladder heart and a 

233 




A RESCUE FROM A FIFTH STORY. 



THE FIREMAN 235 

better opinion of his fellows. I fancy some of our re- 
formers, even, might visit an engine-house with profit, 
and learn to dwell occasionally on the good that is in 
our cities and learn something about fighting without 
bluster and without ever letting up. 

It was a tall, loose-jointed fellow I met at the Elm 
Street station, a typical down-easter, who had wan- 
dered over the world^and finally settled down as driver 
of the nervous little wagon that carries Chief Ahearn, 
a daring man and famous, in his dashes from fire to fire 
over the city. In these days of idol-breaking it is good 
to see such hero worship as one finds here for all 
men who deserve it, whether in humble station or near 
the top, like this wiry little chief, asleep now up-stairs 
against the night's emergencies. Ask any fireman in 
New York to tell you about Ahearn, and you '11 find 
there is one business where jealousy does n't rule. 
Ahearn? What do they think of Ahearn? Why, 
he 's a wonder, sir; he 's the dandiest man. Say, did 
ye ever hear how he crawled under that blazing naph- 
tha tank and got a man out who was in there uncon- 
scious? They gave him the Bennett medal for that. 
And d' ye know about the rescue he made up in Wil- 
liamsbridge, when that barrel of kerosene exploded? 
Oh, but the prettiest thing Ahearn ever did was — 
Then each man will tell you a different thing. 

The driver's favorite story was of the night when 
Ahearn ran back into a burning tenement on Delancey 
Street, "where nobody had any business to go, sir, the 
fire was that fierce." It was fine to see his face light 
up as he told what his chief did on this occasion, and 
the whole quiet engine-house seemed to throb with 
pride. 

"You see," he went on, "there was a half-crazy 
mother screaming around that her baby was in the 



236 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

building. As a matter of fact, the baby was all right 
— some neighbors had it — but the mother did n't know 
that, and the chief did n't know it, either. He was 
chief of the 4th Battalion then; now he 's deputy chief 
— been promoted, y' know. Chief or not did n't cut 
any ice with him, and he just wrapped a coat around 
his head and went in. He got to the room all right 
where the woman said her baby was, and it was like a 
furnace; so he did the only thing a man can do — got 
down low on his hands and knees and worked along 
toward the bed, with his mouth against the floor, suck- 
ing in air. He went through fire, sir, that nearly 
burned his head off — it did burn off the rims of his 
ears — but he got to that bed somehow, and then he 
found he 'd done it all for nothing. There was n't 
any baby there to save. 

"But there was a chief to save now\ He was about 
gone when he got back to the door, and there he found 
that a spring-lock had snapped shut on him, and he 
was a prisoner, sir — a prisoner in a stove. He did n't 
have any strength left, poor old chief; he could n't 
breathe, let alone batter down doors, and we 'd had 
some choice mourning around here inside of a minute 
if the lads of Hook and Ladder 18 had n't smashed 
in after him. They thought he 'd looked for that baby 
about long enough. The last thing he did was to kick 
his foot through a panel, and they found him there un- 
conscious, with his rubber boot sticking out into the 
hall. 

"Tell ye another thing the chief did," continued the 
driver. "He rescued a husband and wife in the Hotel 
Jefferson, out of a seventh-story window, when the 
whole business was roaring with fire. That 's only 
about a month ago ; it was a mighty sad case. We had 
three people to save, if we could, and two of 'em sick — 



THE FIREMAN 237 

the husband and wife — and the third was a trained 
nurse taking care of 'em. Shows how people get rat- 
tled in a fire. Why, if they 'd only kept their hall 
door shut — well, they did n't, and there they were, all 
three at the window, without hardly any clothes on, 
and the flames close behind 'em. 

"We got up on the top floor of the Union Square 
Hotel, the chief and I, about ten feet away along the 
same wall, and by leaning out of our windows, we 
could tell 'em what to do. It was a case of ropes 
and swing across to us, but it is n't every man can 
make a rope fast right when a fire is hurrying him, es- 
pecially a sick man, or mebbe it was a poor rope he had. 
Anyhow, when the nurse came out of that window, 
you might say tumbled out (you see, they made her 
go first), she just fell like that much dead weight, 
scared, you know, and when the rope tightened it 
snapped, and down she went, seven stories — killed her 
bang. 

"The chief saw that would never do, so we went up 
on the roof and threw over more rope. It was clothes- 
line, the only thing handy, but I doubled it to make 
sure. And with that we got the husband and wife 
across all safe, for now, you see, we could lift 'em 
out easy, without such a terrible jerk on the rope. 
That was the chief's idea." 

"Yes," said I, "but yon helped. What 's your 
name?" 

"No, no," he smiled; "never mind me. I 'm no- 
body. Let the chief have it all." And then he went 
on with the story, which interested me mainly as show- 
ing the kind of loyalty one finds among these firemen. 
Each man will tell of another man's achievements, not 
of his own. You could never find out what Bill 
Brown did from Brown himself. 



238 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

The clock ticked on, some service calls rang on the 
telephone, and once the driver bounded up in the mid- 
dle of a word and stood with coat half off, in strained 
attention, counting the strokes of the gong. No, it 
was n't for them. They 'd go, though, on the second 
call. Second calls usually came within twenty min- 
utes of the first, so we 'd soon see. Meantime, he told 
me about a fireman known as "Crazy" Banta. 

"Talk about daredevils !" said he, "this man Banta 
beat the town. Why, I 've known him to go up on a 
house with a line of men where they had to cross the 
ridge of a slate roof — you know, where the two sides 
slant up to a point. Well, the other men would strad- 
dle along careful, one leg on each side, but when Banta 
came he 'd walk across straight up, just like he was 
down on the street. That 's why we called him 
'Crazy' — he 'd do such crazy things. 

"And funny? Well, sir, he 'd swaller quarters as 
fast as you 'd give 'em to him, and let you punch him 
in the stomach and hear 'em rattle around. Then he 'd 
light a match, open his mouth, put the match 'way in- 
side, and let you watch the quarters come up again. 
Had a double stomach, or something. He could swal- 
ler canes, too, same as a circus man. Said he 'd 
learned all his tricks over in India, but some of the 
boys thought he lied. They said he 'd prob'ly trav- 
eled with some show. He used to tell us how he could 
speak Burmese and Siamese and Hindu, all those lin- 
goes, just perfect ; so one day a battalion chief called 
his bluff when there were a lot of emigrants from 
those parts down at the Battery, and blamed if Banta 
did n't chin away to the whole crowd of 'em; you 'd 
thought he was their long-lost brother. Was he a 
foreigner? No, sir; he was born in Hohokus, N. J. 

"But the time Banta fixed his reputation all right 



THE FIREMAN 



239 




AT FULL SI'EED. 



was at a fire in Pell Street — some factory. After that 
he might have told us he could fly or eat glass or any 
old thing, and we 'd have believed him. Tell ye what 
he did. This factory all smashed in after she 'd 
burned a while, and one of the boys — Dave Soden — 
got wedged under the second floor, with all the other 
floors piled on top of him. It was a great big criss- 
cross of timbers, with Dave at the bottom, and the 
flames eating in fast. We could see the whole thing 
was going to make a fine bonfire in about three min- 
utes, and it looked as if Dave would be in it. 



2 4 o CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

"You understand, we did n't dare pry up the tim- 
bers, for that would have brought the whole factory- 
down on Dave and killed him plumb. And we 
could n't begin at the top and throw off the timbers, 
for there was n't any time. We did n't know what to 
do, but Banta he did. He grabbed up a saw, and said 
he 'd crawl in and get Dave out. And, by thunder! 
he did. He just wriggled in and out like a snake 
through those timbers, and when he got to Dave he 
sawed off the end of a beam that held him and then 
dragged him out. He took big chances, for, you see, 
if he 'd sawed off the wrong beam it might have 
brought down the whole business on both of them. 
But Banta he knew how to do it. Oh, he was a won- 
der! They gave him the medal for that, and pro- 
moted him. Say, vou 'd never guess how he ended 
up?" 

"How?" I asked. 

"Got hit by a cable-car ; yes, sir. Hurt so bad they 
retired him. What d' ye think of that? Not afraid 
of the devil, and done up by a measly cable-car !" 



IV 



FAMOUS RESCUES BY NEW YORK FIRE-BOATS 
FROM RED-HOT OCEAN LINERS 

A FTER all has been said that may be about our ad- 
IJL mirable fire-engines, and endless stories have 
been told of gallant fights made by the engine lads 
for life and property, there remains this fact : that New 
York possesses a far more formidable weapon against 
fires than the plucky little "steamers" that go clang- 
ing and tooting about our streets. The fire-boat is as 
much superior to the familiar fire-engine as a rapid- 
fire cannon is superior to a rifle. A single fire-boat 
like the New-Yorker will throw as much water in a 
given time as twenty ordinary fire-engines : it will 
throw twelve thousand gallons in a minute — that is, 
fifty tons; or, if we imagine this great quantity of 
water changed into a rope of ice, say an inch thick, it 
would reach twenty miles. 

Suppose we go aboard her now, this admirable 
New-Yorker, and look about a little. People come 
a long way to see her, for she 's the largest and finest 
fire-boat in the world. Pretty, is n't she? All brass 
and hard wood and electric lights, everything shining 
like a pleasure-yacht. Looks like a gunboat with rows 
of cannon all around her — queer, stumpy little cannon, 
that have wheels above their mouths. Those are hose 
connections, like hydrants in a city, where they screw 
fast the rubber lines. She has twenty-one on a side; 
that makes forty-two "gates," as the engineer calls 

16 241 



242 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

them, without counting four monitors aloft — those 
things on the pilot-house that look like telescopes with 
long red tails. It was the monitors, especially "Big 
Daddy," that did such great work against those North 
German Lloyders, in their drift down the river, in 
1900, with decks ablaze and red-hot iron hulls. We 
shall hear all about that day if we sit us down quietly 
in the fire quarters ashore and get the crew started. 

Stepping over-side again, here we are in the home 
of the fire-boat crew. It 's more like a club than an 
engine-house. No horses stamping about, no stable; 
but pictures on the walls, and men playing cribbage 
or reading, and nobody in a hurry. Plenty of time 
for tales of adventure, unless that gong takes to 
tapping. 

And here comes Gallagher, sliding down yonder 
brass column from the sleeping-rooms. He 's the lad 
who did fine things in that great fire at the Mallory 
pier — saved a man's life and made the roll of honor by 
it. We '11 never get the story from him, but the other 
boys will tell us. 

If ever fire-boats proved their value, it was that night 
in May, 1900, when Pier 19, East River, caught fire, 
with all its length of inflammable freight. Close to 
three o'clock in the morning it was, and a hurricane 
from the northeast was driving the flames toward land. 
Before the engines could start, a fire-wave had leaped 
across South Street and was raging down the block. 
And another fire- wave had leaped across the dock be- 
tween Pier 19 and Pier 20, setting fire to a dozen 
barges and lighters moored there, and to the steamship 
Neuces of the Mallory line. And presently all these 
were blazing, some with cargoes of cotton and oil, 
blazing until the lower end of the island looked out of 
the night in ghastly illumination, a terrible picture in 




"into this street of fire, between the two piers, steamed the big fire- 
boat, STRAIGHT IN, WITH FOUR STREAMS PLAYING TO PORT AND 
FOUR TO STARBOARD, ALL DOING THEIR PRETTIEST." 



244 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

reel and black. They say it was bright enough that 
night half a mile away for a man to pick up a pin. 

There is no harder problem for the engines than 
these fierce-driven water-front fires that sweep in sud- 
denly shoreward, for they must be taken head on, with 
all the smoke in the firemen's faces, and water often 
lacking, strange to say, although the river is so near. 
For the fire-boats, however, the advantage is the other 
way; they attack from the rear, where they see what 
they are doing, and can pump from a whole ocean. 
Besides that, they attack with so formidable a battery 
that no hook-and-ladder corps is needed to "break 
open" for them. The three-inch stream from Big 
Daddy alone will tear off roofs and rip out beams like 
the play of artillery; and if that is not sufficient, the 
boys have only to hitch on the four-and-a-half-inch 
nozzle and set the two pumps feeding it five thousand 
gallons a minute, or twenty tons of water. Under 
that shock there is no wall built of brick and mortar 
that will not crumble. 

When the New-Yorker came up on this memorable 
night the fifth alarm had sounded and things were 
looking serious. Piers 19 and 20 were in full flame, 
and every floating thing between them. Into this 
street of fire steamed the big fire-boat, straight in, with 
four streams playing to port and four to starboard, all 
doing their prettiest. She went ahead slowly, fighting 
back the flames foot by foot, on pier and steamship 
and kindling small craft that drifted by in fiery proces- 
sion. And the air in the men's faces was like the 
breath of a furnace ! 

Here it was that Gallagher won his place on the 
roll of honor in this wise. For some time they had 
heard shouts that were lost in the din of conflagration; 
but presently they made them out as a warning from 




GALLAGHER S RESCUE OF A SWEDE FROM THE BURNING BARGE. 



246 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

somebody somewhere that a man was on a burning 
barge just passing them. It seemed incredible that a 
man could be there, alive and silent; but, with the 
spirit of his trade, Gallagher determined to see if it 
were true : he would board the barge anyhow ; and as 
the New-Yorker swung close alongside, he sprang down 
to her deck, where things were a good deal warmer than 
is necessary for a man's health. And as he leaped, 
John Kerrigan, at the steering-wheel of Big Daddy, 
turned its mighty stream against the barge, keeping it ' 
just over Gallagher's head, so that the spray drenched 
down upon him while the stream itself smote a path 
ahead through the fire. 

Down this path went Gallagher, searching for a 
man, avoiding pitfalls of smoke and treacherous tim- 
bers, confident that Kerrigan would hold the flames 
back, yet see to it that the terrible battering-ram of 
water did not strike him — for to be struck with the full 
force of Big Daddy's stream is like being pounded by 
a trip-hammer. 

Gallagher reached the cabin door, found it locked, 
put his back against it and smashed it in. Then he 
went on, groping, choking, feeling his way, searching 
for his man. And at last on one of the bunks he 
found him, stretched out in a stupor of sleep or 
drowsed by the stifle of gases. The man was a Swede 
named Thomas Bund, and he came out of that cabin 
on Gallagher's back, came off that burning barge on 
Gallagher's back, and if he does not bless the name of 
Gallagher all his days, then there is no gratitude in 
Sweden. 

Here we see the kind of service the fire-boats render. 
On this night they saved the situation and a million 
dollars besides; they worked against a blazing steam- 
ship, against blazing piers, against blazing runaways; 



THE FIREMAN 247 

worked for eleven hours, until the last smolder of fire 
had been drowned under thirty thousand tons of water. 
And not a year passes but they do something of like 
sort. Now it is a steamship, say the ill-starred Leona, 
that comes up the bay with a cargo of cotton burning 
between decks. The New-Yorker makes short work 
of her. Again it is a blazing lumber district along 
the river, like the great McClave yards, where the fire- 
boats fought for eight days and nights before they 
gained the victory. But they did gain it. Or it may 
be a fire back from the river, like the Tarrant horror, 
where the land engines, sore pressed, welcome far- 
carried streams from the fire-boats as help that may 
turn the balance. 

"Why, this fire-boat 's only ten years old, sir," said 
Captain Braisted, "and she 's saved more than she cost 
every year we 've had her." Then he added, as his 
eyes dwelt proudly on the trim craft purring at her 
dock-side : "And she cost a tidy sum, too." 

Let us come now to that placid summer afternoon, 
to that terrible Saturday, June 30, 1900, when tug-boats 
in the North River looked upon a fire the like of which 
the river had never known and may not know again. 
They looked from a distance, we may be sure, these 
tug-boats ; for when a great liner swings down-stream, 
a roaring, red-hot furnace, it is time for wooden-deck 
craft to scurry out of the way. And here were three 
liners in such case, the Bremen, the Saale, and the 
Main, all burning furiously and beyond human help, 
one would say, for their iron hulls were vast fire-traps, 
with port-holes too small for rescue, and the decks 
swept with flame. It was hard to know that back of 
those steep sides were men in anguish, held like pris- 
oners in a fortress of glowing steel that sizzled as it 
drifted — three fortresses of glowing steel. 



248 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

Then up steamed the New-Yorker and the Van 
Wyck, with men behind fire-shields against the blis- 
tering scorch and glare, with monitors and rail-pipes 
spurting out all that the pumps could send. The New- 
Yorker took the Bremen, the Van Wyck took the 
Saalc; and there they lay for hours, close on the edge 
of the fire, like a pair of salamanders, engines throb- 
bing, pumps pounding, pilots at the wheel watching 
every movement of the liners, following foot by foot, 
drawing in closer when they gained on the fire, hold- 
ing away a shade when the fire gained on them, fight- 
ing every minute. 

"It 's queer," said Captain Braisted, "but when you 
play a broadside of heavy streams on a vessel's side, 
say at fifty feet, there 's a strong recoil that keeps driv- 
ing the fire-boat back. It 's as if you were pushing off 
all the time with poles instead of water. And you 
have to keep closing in with the engines." 

"How near did you get to the Bremen?" I asked. 

"Oh, we finally got right up against her, say after 
forty-five minutes. You can cool off a lot of red-hot 
iron in forty-five minutes when you Ve got forty-five 
tons of water a minute to do it with." 

It was just as they came alongside that one of the 
crew made out a human shape in the coal-chute some 
ten feet up the Bremen's side. And presently they 
saw others there, blackened faces, fierce and fearful 
eyes. And above the fire crackle and the crash of 
water they heard men's cries. 

Straightway a ladder was brought, and three of the 
crew, Breen, Kerrigan, and Hartmann, lifted it on 
their shoulders until the top rung came up level with 
the coal-chute. But this, instead of bringing relief to 
the fire-bound company, brought madness; for now 
they fought and struggled so, each one wishing to go 



THE FIREMAN 249 

first, that none were able to go at all. "They were like 
wild beasts,'" said one of the crew. 

In this crisis Gallagher sprang up the ladder to the 
top, where he could look in through the hole, the one 
hole in all the vessel's sides that was large enough for 
a man's body to pass. And reaching in here, he 
grabbed what was nearest, arm, leg, or shock of hair, 
and hauled it out and lowered it down the ladder to 
Captain Braisted, who stood below him and passed the 
bundle on. Then Gallagher grabbed again and again, 
pulling forth by sheer strength one man at a time, tak- 
ing them as they came, Germans or Italians, officers 
or coal-handlers, anything that was alive. Down 
came the tumbling mass, yelling, praying, fighting, a 
miserable human stream; and when it was all over 
and the count was taken, they had saved thirty-two 
lives. 

Now one of the rescued men spoke up in broken 
English, and said that there were others still on the 
Bremen, down in the engine-room. And Gallagher 
volunteered to go aboard for the rescue if one of the 
men who knew the vessel would come along to guide 
him. But no man offered this service. It was too 
hazardous a thing, they said; where the fire was not 
raging there was smoke and darkness, and the engine- 
room was far down in the vessel. They had groped 
about themselves for half an hour in despair, search- 
ing for the way out, and now that they had found it, 
they were not fools enough to go in again. 

"But you say there are others in there alive !" in- 
sisted Gallagher. 

The rescued ones shook their heads blankly at this; 
in their minds the law of self-preservation rode over 
all other things at this moment. Poor men, they 
were half dazed by their sufferings and the shock ! 




SAVING THE MEN OF THE "BREMEN. 



THE FIREMAN 251 

"All right," cried Gallagher; "I '11 go in and find 
'em without any guide. Hold the ladder, boys." 

And up he went! 

"I 'm with you, Ned," called Captain Braisted; and 
without more words these two climbed in through the 
coal-chute and started down the black, hot, stifling 
ways for the engine-room. And somehow they got 
there safely, and found eight men still alive, all Ger- 
mans, engineers and their assistants. But when the 
firemen called to them to hurry out for their lives, 
they refused to move. Their duty was with their en- 
gines, said they; they had to run the engines; they 
were much obliged to the American gentlemen, but 
they could not leave their post. 

Gallagher and Braisted could scarcely believe their 
ears. 

"But you will die !" they urged. 

The Germans thought it very likely ; still they could 
not leave. 

"But it won't do any good; the vessel is past hope; 
you will be burned to death." 

The Germans understood perfectly : they would be 
burned to death at their engines ; and as they were all 
of this mind and not to be shaken, the firemen could 
only say "good-by" and set forth sadly on the return 
journey. And this time they nearly lost themselves, 
but at last their good star prevailed, and they came 
without harm to their comrades, who listened in won- 
der to the news they brought. It seemed such utter 
folly, the decision of that unhappy engine-room crew, 
yet there was something almost splendid in their stub- 
born devotion to duty. Quietly they had looked death 
in the face, a horrible, lingering death, and had not 
flinched ; and days later, when the steamer had burned 
herself out and lay grounded in the mud, cold and 



252 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

black, the wreckers found these faithful though mis- 
taken men still at their posts, still by their engines, 
where they had waited in spite of everything — where 
they had perished. 

All this time the Van Wyck had been working on 
the Saale, but in a harder fight, for the flames raged 
here as fiercely as on the Bremen, while the smaller 
fire-boat could throw against them only twenty-five 
tons of w r ater a minute, which was not enough. 

So, now, when all had been done that could be for 
the Bremen, orders came that the New-Yorker, too, 
turn her streams against the Saale, and a little later 
the two fire-boats were in massed attack upon the un- 
happy liner, which swung down the bay like a blazing 
island, and presently grounded by the bow on the Com- 
munipaw mud-flats, and rested there for the last agony. 

The story of those tragic hours is not for telling 
now. There were more heroic rescues. There were 
brave attempts at rescue that availed nothing. The 
fire lads stood on the hurricane deck, with flames roar- 
ing about them and water up to their knees surging 
past like a mill-race; it was the return torrent from 
their own nozzles. Foot by foot the stern settled and 
the water crept nearer, nearer to the open port-holes. 
In a large stateroom aft fourteen men and one woman 
gave a noble picture of resignation in the face of an 
awful death. Hemmed in there between fire and 
water, they prayed quietly, and thanked the fire lads 
for cups of water passed in through the port-hole, and 
waved "good-by" as the stern gave a final lurch and 
went down. 

Nor does this end the record of that day, for 
there was still the Main to fight for, and at eleven 
o'clock that night the New-Yorker steamed up the 
river and caug-ht the third liner as the flood-tide bore 



254 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

her stern first toward the flats of Weehawken. She 
had been blazing for eight hours, and was red-hot 
now from the water-line up It seemed incredible 
that there could be a living thing aboard her, yet they 
went to work in the old w r ay, and within an hour had 
dragged out through the coal-hole a blackened and 
frightened company, more than a score of boiler-clean- 
ers and coal-handlers who had somehow lived through 
those fearful hours by burrowing down in the deepest 
bunkers far below the water-level. 

After this the fire-boats did other things. 



THE AERIAL ACROBAT 



SHOWING THAT IT TAKES MORE THAN MUSCLE 
AND SKILL TO WORK ON THE HIGH BARS 

A FEW years ago I had the pleasure of traveling for 
ten days with a great circus, and in this way came 
to know some very interesting people— elephant-keep- 
ers, lion-tamers, trapeze performers, bareback riders, 
not to mention the bearded lady, the dog- faced boy, 
and other side-show celebrities who used to eat with us 
in the cook-tent — there was one gentleman, appareled 
in blue velvet, who ate with his feet, for the reason 
that he had no arms, and would reach across for salt 
or butter with an easy knee-and-ankle movement that 
was a perpetual surprise. 

What strange things one sees traveling with a cir- 
cus ! Every night there is a mile of trains to be loaded, 
every morning a tented city to be built. Such hard 
work for everybody! Two performances a day, be- 
sides the street procession. And what a busy time in 
the tents ! Leapers getting ready, double-somersault 
men getting ready, clowns stuffing out false stomachs 
and chalking their faces, kings of the air buckling on 
their spangles. Ouf! How glad we all were when 
five o'clock came, and the concert was over, and the 
"big top," with its spreading amphitheater and its four 
. reat center-poles, stood silent and empty ! 

It was at this five-o'clock hour one day that I first 

255 



256 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

saw little Nelson, the ten-year-old trapeze performer, 
and that picture remains among the pleasantest of my 
circus memories. I can recall more exciting things, 
like the fight between two jealous wrestlers, or the 
mystery of the lost Chinese giant, or the story of a 
wrecked train, when the wild animals escaped and the 
fat lady was rescued with difficulty from a burning 
car. And I can recall sad things, the case of that poor 
trapeze girl, two weeks a widow, who nevertheless 
went through her act twice a day and tripped away 
kissing her hands to the crowd while her heart was 
breaking. And saddest of all was the case of beauti- 
ful "Zazel," once the much-advertised "human cannon- 
ball," then suddenly a helpless cripple after a fall from 
the dome of the tent. Her husband, one of the circus 
men, told me how she lived for more than a ye5r in a 
plaster case swung down from the ceiling, and of her 
sweetness and patience through it all. And she finally 
recovered, I am glad to say, so that she could walk — a 
pale, weak image of this once splendid circus queen. 

But let me come to Nelson. This sturdy little fel- 
low was one of the circus children, "born on the saw- 
dust," brought up to- regard lion cages as the proper 
background for a nursery, and thinking of father and 
mother- in connection with the Hying bars and bare- 
back feats. It was Nelson's ambition to follow in his 
father's steps and become a great artist on the trapeze. 
Indeed, at this time he felt himself already an artist, 
and at the hour of rest would walk forth into the 
middle ring all alone and with greatest dignity go 
through his practice. He would not be treated as a 
child, and scorned any suggestion that he go out and 
play. Play? He had work to do. Look here! Do 
you know any man who can throw a prettier row of 
flip-flaps than this? And wait! Here 's a forward 



THE AERIAL ACROBAT 257 

somersault ! Is it well done or not ? Did he come 
over with a good lift? Like his father, you think? 
Ah ! I can still see his chest swell with pride. 

Nelson was not a regular member of the show; he 
was a child, and merely came along with his parents, 
the circus being his only home; but occasionally, after 
much teasing or as a reward for good behavior, his 
father would lead the boy forth before a real audience. 
And how they would applaud as the trim little figure 
in black-and-yellow tights rose slowly to the tent-top, 
feet together, body arched back, teeth set on the. thong 
of the pulley-line that his father held anxiously ! 

And how the women would catch their breath when 
Nelson, hanging by his knees in the long swing, would 
suddenly pretend to slip, seem to fall, then catch the bar 
cleverly by his heels and sweep far out over the spread 
of faces, arms folded, head back, and a look that said 
plainly : "Don't you people see what an artist I am?" 

This boy possessed the two great requisites in a 
trapeze performer, absolute fearlessness and a longing 
to perform in the air — which longing made him will- 
ing to take endless pains in learning. It would seem 
that acrobats differ from divers, steeple-climbers, lion- 
tamers, and the rest in this, that from their early years 
they have been strongly drawn to the career before 
them, to leaping, turning in the air, and difficult tricks 
on the trapeze and horizontal bars. The acrobat must 
be born an acrobat, not so much because his feats might 
not be learned by an ordinary man, but because the 
particular kind of courage needed to make an acrobat 
is not found in the ordinary man. In other words, to 
be an aerial leaper or an artist on the flying bars is 
quite as much a matter of heart as of agility and 
muscle. There are men who know how to do these 
things, but can't. 

17 



258 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

In illustration of this let me present three of my cir- 
cus friends, Weitzel and Zorella and Danny Ryan, 
trapeze professionals whose daring and skill are justly 
celebrated. Zorella's real name, 1 may say, is Nagel, 
and so far from being a dashing foreigner, he is a 
quiet-spoken young man from Grand Rapids, Michi- 
gan, where he learned his first somersaults tumbling 
about on sawdust piles. And at sixteen he was the 
only boy in the region who could do the giant swing. 
Whereupon along came a circus with an acrobat who 
needed a "brother," and Nagel got the job. Two days 
later he began performing in the ring, and since then 
— that was ten years ago — he has n't missed a cir- 
cus day. 

The act that has given these three their fame in- 
cludes a swing, a leap, and a catch, which seems simple 
enough until one learns the length and drop of that 
swing, and how the leapers turn in the air, and what 
momentum their bodies have as they shoot toward the 
man hanging for the catch from the last bar. It is 
Weitzel who catches the other two. He was "under- 
stander" in a "brother" act before he learned the 
trapeze ; and the man who earns his living by holding 
two or three men on his head and shoulders while they 
do tricks of balancing is pretty sure to build up a 
strong body. And Weitzel needs all his strength 
when Danny springs from the pedestal over there at 
the tent-top fifty-two feet away, and, swinging through 
a half-circle thirty-six feet across, comes the last six- 
teen feet flying free, and turning twice as he comes. 
For all his brawny arms, Weitzel would be torn away 
by the clutch of that hurling mass, were not the strain 
eased by the stretch of fourteen thongs of rubber, seven 
on a side, that support his bar cords. And sometimes, 
as the leapers catch, the bar sags full four feet, and 




"AS THEY SHOOT "JOWARD THE MAN HANGING FOR THE CATCH 
FROM THE LAST BAR." 



260 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

then, as they "snap off" down to the net, springs nine 
feet up, so that Weitzel's head has many a time 
bumped the top support. 

The catcher-man must hold himself ready for a 
dozen different leaps, must watch for the safety clutch 
where the four hands grip first at the elbows, then 
slide down the forearms to the wrists and hold there 
where the tight-bound handkerchiefs jam; he must 
know how to seize Zorella by the ankles when he shoots 
at him feet up after a backward double : he must know 
how to land Danny when he comes turning swiftly 
with eyes blindfolded and body bound in a sack. 

All these feats are hard enough to do, yet still 
harder, one might say, is the mere starting to do them. 
There are scores of acrobats, well skilled in doubles 
and shoots and twisters, who would not for their lives 
go up on the pedestal whence Ryan and Zorella make 
their spring, and simply take the first long swing hang- 
ing from the trapeze. Nothing else, simply take the 
swing ! 

The fact is, there is an enormous difference between 
working on horizontal bars say ten feet above ground, 
and on the same bars thirty feet above ground, or be- 
tween a trapeze act with leaps after a moderate swing, 
and the same act with leaps after a long swing. Often 
I have watched Ryan and Zorella poised on the pedes- 
tal just before the swing a"nd holding the trapeze bar 
drawn so far over to one side that its supporting 
wires come up almost horizontal ; and even on the 
ground it has made me dizzy to see them lean forward 
for the bar which falls short of the pedestal, so that 
they can barely catch it with the left-hand fingers, 
while the right hand clings to the pedestal brace. 
They need the send of that initial spring to give them 
speed, but — 



THE AERIAL ACROBAT 261 

Well, there was a very powerful and active man in 
Columbus, Ohio, a kind of local athlete, who agreed, 
on a wager, to swing off from the pedestal as Danny 
and Zorella did. And one day a small company gath- 
ered at the practice hour to see him do it. He said it 
Avas easy enough. His friends chaffed him and vowed 
he "could n't do it in a hundred years." The big man 
climbed up the swinging ladder to the starting-place, 
and stood there looking down. When you stand on 
the pedestal the ground seems a long way below you, 
and there is little comfort in the net. The big man 
said nothing, but began to get pale. He had the 
trapeze-bar all right with one hand; the thing was to 
let go with the other. 

For ten minutes the big man stood there. He said 
he was n't in a hurry. His friends continued to joke 
him. One man urged him to come down. The pro- 
fessionals told him he 'd better not try it if he was 
afraid — at which the others laughed, and that settled 
it, for the big man zvas afraid ; but he was stubborn, 
too, and, rising on his toes, he threw his right arm for- 
ward and started. He caught the bar safely with his 
right hand, swept clown like a great pendulum, and 
at the lowest point of the swing was ripped away from 
the bar with the jerk of his two hundred pounds, and 
went skating along the length of the net on his face 
until he was a sorry-looking big man with the scratch 
of the meshes. Not one athlete in twenty, they say, 
without special training, could hold that bar after such 
a drop. 

Zorella cited a case in point where a first-class acro- 
bat was offered a much larger salary by a rival circus 
to become the partner of an expert on the high bars. 
"This man was crazy to accept," said Zorella, "and 
everything was practically settled. The two did their 



262 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

act together on the low bars in great shape. Then 
they tried it on the high bars, and the new man 
stuck right at the go-off. Queerest thing you ever 
saw. He had to start on the end bar with a giant 
swing, — that gives 'em their send, you know, — then 
do a backward single to the middle bar, then a shoot 
on to the last bar, and from there drop with somer- 
saults down to the net. All this was easy for him 
on the low bars, but when he got up high — well, he 
had n't the nerve to let go of the first bar after the 
giant swing. He kept going round and round, and 
just stuck there. Seemed as if his hands were nailed 
fast to that bar. We talked to him, and reasoned with 
him, and he tried over and over again, but it was no 
use. He could drop from the last bar, he could shoot 
from the middle bar, but to save his life he could n't 
let go of the first bar. I don't know whether he was 
afraid, or what; but he could n't do it, and the end 
of it was, he had to give up the offer, although it 
nearly broke his heart." 

And even acrobats accustomed to working at heights 
feel uneasy in the early spring when they begin prac- 
tising for a new se'ason. The old tricks have al- 
ways in a measure to be learned over again, and they 
work gradually from simple things to harder ones 
— a straight leap, then one somersault, then two. And 
foot by foot the pedestal is lifted until the body over- 
comes its shrinking. Even so I saw Zorella one day 
scratched and bruised from many failures in the trick 
where Weitzel catches him by the ankles. Here, after 
the long swing, he must shoot ahead feet first as if for 
a backward somersault, and then, changing suddenly, 
do a turn and a half forward, and dive past Weitzel 
with body whirling so as to bring his legs over just 
right for the catch. And every time they missed of 



THE AERIAL ACROBAT 263 

course he fell, and risked striking the net on his fore- 
head, which is the most dangerous thing an acrobat 
can do. To save his neck he must squirm around, as 
a cat turns, and land on his back; which is not so 
easy in the fraction of a second, especially if you hap- 
pen to be dazed by a glancing blow of the catcher-man's 
arm. 



II 



ABOUT DOUBLE AND TRIPLE SOMERSAULTS AND 
THE DANGER OF LOSING HEART 

IN talking with my circus friends I was surprised to 
learn that a trapeze performer in perfect practice, 
say in mid-season, may suddenly, without knowing 
why, begin to hesitate or blunder in a certain trick that 
he has done without a slip for years. This happened to 
Danny Ryan in the fall of 1900, when he found him- 
self growing more and more uncertain of his difficult 
pirouette leap, a feat invented by himself in 1896, and 
never done by another performer. Danny did it first 
when he used to play the clown with the spring-board 
leapers who do graceful somersaults over elephants 
and horses. With them would come Danny, made 
up as a fat man, and do a backward somersault and 
a full twister at the same time, the effect being a 
queer corkscrew turn that made the people laugh. 
They little suspected that this awkward-looking leap 
was one of the most difficult feats in the air ever at- 
tempted, or that it had cost Ryan weeks of patient 
practice and many a hard knock before he mastered it. 
And then one day, after doing it hundreds of times 
with absolute ease, he did it badly, then he did it 
worse, then he fell, and finally began to be afraid of 
it and left it out of the act. Acrobats shake their 
heads when you ask for an explanation of a thing like 
that. They don't know the explanation, but they 
dread the thing. 

264 



THE AERIAL ACROBAT 265 

"When a man feels that way about a trick, he 's got 
to quit it for a while," said Ryan, "or he '11 get hurt. 
'Most all the accidents happen where a performer 
forces himself against something inside him that says 
stop. Sometimes an acrobat has to give up his work 
entirely. Now, there 's Dunham, — you 've heard of 
him, — the greatest performer in the world on high 
bars. They '11 give him any salary he wants to ask. 
Graceful? Well, you ought to see him let go from 
his giant swing and do a back somersault clean over 
the middle bar and catch the third ! And now they 
say he 's gone out of the business. Somebody told 
me it was religion. Don't you believe it. He 's had 
a feeling — it 's something like fear, but it is n't fear 
—that he 's worked on high bars long enough." 

"He 's had bad luck with his partners, too," re- 
marked Weitzel. "Couple of 'em missed the turn 
somehow and got killed. Say, that takes a man's 
nerve as much as anything, to have his partner hurt. 
I don't wonder Dunham wants to quit." 

"Tell you where it 's hard on an acrobat," put in 
Zorella — "that 's where he can't quit on account of his 
family — where he needs the money. I remember a 
young fellow joined the show out west to leap over 
elephants. He got along well enough over two ele- 
phants, but when it came to three, why, we could all 
see he was shaky. Some of the boys told him he 'd 
better stop, but he said he 'd try to learn, and he 
was such a nice, modest fellow and worked so hard 
that everybody wished him luck. But it was n't any 
use. One day he tackled a double over three ele- 
phants, and came down all in sections, with his right 
foot on the mattress and his left foot on the ground. 
That was his last leap, poor fellow, for the ankle bones 
snapped as his left foot struck, and a few hours later 



266 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

he lay in the dressing-room tent, pretty white, with the 
doctors over him. I '11 never forget the way he looked 
up at us when we came in. He was game all right, 
but his eyes were awful pathetic. 'Well, boys,' said 
he, 'here I am. I did the best I could.' Turned out 
he 'd done it for a sick wife and a little baby. Pretty 
tough, was n't it?" 

Speaking of leaps over elephants brings to my mind 
an afternoon when I watched a circus rehearsal in the 
open air. That is a thing better worth seeing, to my 
mind, that the regular performance; the acrobats and 
riders in their every-day clothes are more like ordi- 
nary men and women, and their feats seem the more 
difficult for occasional slips and failures. 

Here, for instance, are a mother and daughter, in 
shirt-waists, watching the trick monkey ride a pony, 
when suddenly a whistle sounds, and off goes the 
mother to drive three plunging horses in a chariot- 
race, while the daughter hurries to her part in an 
equestrian quadrille. And now these children playing 
near the drilling elephants trot into the ring and do 
wonderful things on bicycles. And yonder sleepy- 
looking man is a liomtamer; and those three are the 
famous Potters, aerial leapers ; and this thick-set fellow 
in his shirt-sleeves is Artressi, the best jumper in the 
circus. He 's going to practise now ; see, they are put- 
ting up the spring-board and the long downward run 
that leads to it. These other men are jumpers, too, 
but Artressi is the star ; he draws the big salary. 

Now they start and spring off rather clumsily, one 
after another, in straight leaps to the mattress. They 
won't work into good form for some days yet. Here 
they come again, a little faster, and two of them try 
singles. Here comes Artressi. Ah ! a double for- 
ward, and prettily taken. The crowd applauds. Now 



268 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

a tall man tries a double. Gradually the practice gets 
hotter until every man is doing his best. There will 
be stiff joints here in the morning, but never mind! 

In a resting-spell I sab down by Artressi and talked 
with him about leaping. It was hard, he said, going 
off a spring-board into empty air. Did n't know 
how it was, but he could always do better with some- 
thing to leap over, say elephants or horses. He could 
judge the mattress easier ; was n't so apt to miss it. 
What was his biggest leap ? Well, four elephants and 
three camels was about his best, with a pyramid of men 
on top. He 'd cleared that twice a day for weeks some 
years ago, but he would n't do it now. No, sir; four 
elephants was enough for any man to leap over if he 
had a wife and child. That made a flight of thirty 
feet, anyhow, from the spring-board to the ground. 
Oh, yes, he turned two somersaults on the way — for- 
ward somersaults. It was n't possible for anybody to 
clear four elephants and turn backward somersaults. 

I asked Artressi (his real name is Artress) about a 
leap with three somersaults, and found him positive 
that such a feat will never become part of a regular 
circus program. A man can turn the three somer- 
saults all right, but he loses control of himself, and 
does n't know whether he is coming down right or 
wrong. In fact, he is sure to come down wrong if he 
does it often. Then he mentioned the one case where 
he himself had made a leap with three somersaults. It 
was down in Kentucky, at the home of his boyhood. 
Years had passed since he had seen the town, and in 
that time he had risen from nothing to a blaze of cir- 
cus glory. He had become the "Great Artressi" in- 
stead of little joe Artress, and now he was to appear 
before the people who knew him. 

It was perhaps the most exciting moment of his life, 



THE AERIAL ACROBAT 269 

and as he came down the run toward the spring-board 
he nerved himself to so fine an effort that instead of 
doing two somersaults over the horses and elephants, 
as he intended, he did three, and, by a miracle of for- 
tune, landed safely. That was his first and last triple ; 
he was n't taking chances of a broken neck or a twisted 
spine, which had been the end of more than one ambi- 
tious leaper. No, sir ; he would stick to doubles, where 
a man knows exactly what he 's doing. 

In talking with acrobats, I came upon an interesting 
phenomenon that seems almost like a violation of the 
laws of gravitation. It appears that the movements 
of a performer on the bars or trapeze are affected in a 
marked degree by the slope of the ground underneath. 
In other words, although bars and trapeze may rest 
on supports that are perfectly level, yet the swing of 
an acrobat's body will be accelerated over a downward 
slope or retarded over an upward slope. So true is 
this that the trapeze performer swinging over an up- 
ward slope will often require all his strength to reach 
a given point, while over a downward slope he must 
hold back, lest he reach it too easily and suffer a colli- 
sion. Nevertheless, the swing in both cases is pre- 
cisely the same, with rigging and bars fixed to a true 
level. 

On this point there have been endless arguments, 
and many persons have contended that acrobats must 
imagine all this, since the upward or downward slope 
of the ground under a trapeze can in no way affect the 
movement of that trapeze. I fancy the wisdom of 
such people is like that of the professors who proved 
some years ago that it is a physical impossibility for a 
ball-player to "pitch a curve." There is no doubt that 
trapeze performers are obliged to take serious account 
of the ground's slope in their daily work, to note care- 



270 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

fully the amount of slope and the direction of slope, 
and to take their precautions accordingly. If they 
did not they would fail in their feats. Those are the 
facts to which all acrobats bear witness, let scientists 
explain them as they may. 

"Suppose the ground slopes to one side or the other 
under your trapeze," I asked Ryan, one day. "How 
does that affect you?" 

"It draws you down the slope, and makes your bar 
swing that way." 

"What do you do about it?" 

"Sometimes I pull the bar over a little in starting, 
so as to balance the pull of the hill ; but that 's uncer- 
tain. It 's better to fix the rigging so that the bar is 
a little higher on the downhill side." 

Ryan said that a straight-ahead downhill slope is the 
worst for a man, because he is apt to hold back too 
hard, being afraid of bumping into his partner, and so 
he does n't get send enough, and falls short of his 
mark. 

"But all slopes are bad for us," he said, "and we 
try hard to get our things put up over level ground." 

This is but one instance of the jealous care shown 
by acrobats for their bars and rigging. These things 
belong not to the circus, but to the individual per- 
formers, who put every brace and knot to the sever- 
est test. For the high bars a particular kind of hick- 
ory is used with a core of steel inside. Every mesh 
of the net must resist a certain strain. The bars them- 
selves must be neither too dry nor too moist. The 
light must come in a certain way, and a dozen other 
things. Many an accident has come through the fail- 
ure of some little thing. 

This much is certain, that acrobats often suffer with- 
out serious injury falls that would put an end to ordi- 



THE AERIAL ACROBAT 271 

nary men. Like bareback riders, they know how to 
fall, this art consisting chiefly in "tucking up" into a 
ball and hardening the muscles so that the shock 
is eased. Also they have by practice acquired the 
power of deciding instantly how to make the body pro- 
tect itself in an emergency. 

"Now," said Ryan, "I '11 give you a case where two 
of us did some quick thinking, and it helped a lot. 
We were with a circus in Australia, making a night 
run. It was somewhere in New South Wales, and 
every man was asleep in his bunk. First thing we 
knew, bang, rip, tear! a drowsy engineer had smashed 
into us and taken the rear truck of our sleeper clean 
off, and there were the floor timbers of our car bump- 
ing along over the ties. W T e had the last car. 

"Our engineer never slowed up, and our floor was 
going- into kindling-wood fast. It was as dark as 
pitch, and nobody said a word. Fred Reynolds and I 
— Reynolds was a clown acrobat — had lower berths 
right at the end, next to the negro porter, and I don't 
say we escaped because we were acrobats, but — well, 
this is what we did. Fred gave one mighty leap, just 
like going over elephants, and cleared the whole trail 
of wreckage that was pounding along behind the car 
and landed safe on the track. It was a crazy thing 
to do, in my opinion, but it worked. I made a spring 
for the chandelier, and hung there until the train 
stopped. And afterward I found my trousers back on 
the road-bed with the legs cut clean off, and I guess 
my own legs would have gone the same way if 
they 'd been there. What did the porter do? Oh, he 
did nothing, and — and he was killed." 



Ill 



IN WHICH THE AUTHOR TRIES HIS HAND WITH 
PROFESSIONAL TRAPEZE PERFORMERS 

ON this particular morning — it was a damp day in 
February — I had been watching the Potter fam- 
ily, familiar on circus posters in tights and spangles, 
at their practice of aerial leaps, when Henry Potter, 
who is husband, father, and brother of the others, and 
chief of the act, suggested that if I wanted a vivid idea 
of what it was to work on the flying trapeze I might 
come up and take his place on the cradle and let Tom 
chuck the "kid" across to me and see if I could catch 
him. 

The "kid" was Roy Potter (sometimes Royetta, when 
presented in feminine trappings), a slender lad of sev- 
enteen, who had just been doing doubles and twisters 
and half turns, leaping with shoot and graceful curve 
from brother to brother up there in mid-air under the 
rafters of this moldering old skating-rink. 

"Go ahead," he urged; "it 's easy enough. All 
you 've got to do is hang by your knees, and it can't 
hurt the boy, for he '11 drop in the net if you miss him. 
Besides, we '11 put the 'mechanic' on him." 

The "mechanic" is an arrangement of waist straps 
and trailing pulley-ropes that guard a gymnast while 
he is learning some new feat. 

Doubtless, I should have declined this amiable offer 
had I taken time to consider, for there was no par- 
ticular appropriateness in a man who knew nothing 

272 



I J 



THE AERIAL ACROBAT 273 

/ 

about the trapeze,, except such rudiments as boys of 
twelve get in thei/r own back yards, taking part off- 
hand in a leaping performance thirty feet above ground 
with "the phendraenal and fearless Potters" — I quote 
the circus sig4$~— '^greatest of all great acrobatic 
aerials." Yet* he put it so plausibly — I certainly 
would get a belter idea of the thing — and he made it 
out so simple — anybody can hang by his knees — that 
1 said all right; I would go up on the cradle and catch 
the "kid." ' 

This cradle is composed of two steel bars, about a 
foot apart, that are held rigid by tackle and wire braces. 
You climb to it (after emptying your pockets) by a 
swinging ladder, none too secure, and, seated here, look 
down as from the dome of a circus tent. On a line 
with you are other cradles, where your partners are 
coolly preparing to do things. You glance across at 
them anxiously, then down at the net, which seems a 
long way beneath. 

"Better put some rosin on your hands," sings out 
Potter from the ground, where he is arranging the 
"mechanic" lines. 

"It 's in that little bag on the wire," calls the boy 
from his perch. "Rub it along your wrists, too; we '11 
ketch better." 

H'm! We will, eh? I do as I am told, and realize 
that even the trifling movement to get this rosin-bag 
involves a certain peril. 

"Now lean back," comes the word; "catch one bar 
in the crotch of your knees and brace your feet under 
the other. That 's right. Hang 'way down. Stretch 
your arms out, and when I say, 'Now,' pull up and 
reach for the 'kid' — you '11 see him coming." 

Sure enough, although the blood was in my head, I 
could see over there Tom Potter's red shirt and the i 
18 



274 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

boy's blue one as they poised for the swing. Then 
Tom's body dropped back, and he swept the lad at full 
arm's length, through a half circle, and let him go 
head first, cutting the air, straight at me. 

"Now," cried Harry, and I reached out as best I 
could, only to see the boy, a second later, floundering 
in the net below me. And they all were laughing. In 
trying to reach one way I had actually reached the 
other, and withdrawn my arms instead of extending 
them, which made me understand better than an hour 
of words that a man hanging head down at a height 
finds his muscles as hard to control as a penman writ- 
ing with his left hand for the first time. He cannot 
even see straight until his eyes learn to gage distances 
and the relation of things presented upside down. 

With some pains and an awkward clutching at the 
braces I got myself back into a sitting position, while 
Roy climbed again good-naturedly to his starting- 
cradle. A trapeze performer must have infinite pa- 
tience. 

Again we tried the trick, and this time, as I hung 
expectant, I felt my wrists clutched tight, and there 
was the agile leaper -swinging back, pendulum fashion, 
from my arms, then forward, then back, while the bar 
strained under my knees. 

"Nov/, throw him!" called Harry. "Stiffen out and 
chuck him back to Tom. Now !" 

Alas ! I made a bungle of it. I could not give him 
send enough, and the boy, falling short of Tom's arms, 
dangled from the "mechanic" lines half-way down to 
the net. It was quite plain that more than good inten- 
tions are needed to chuck young gentlemen through 
flights of eighteen feet. I was feeling decidedly queer 
by this time — a sort of half-way-over-the-Channel 
faintness, and could imagine what it must be to work 



THE AERIAL ACROBAT 27$ 

up here, right at the peak of a "big-top" tent, under 
the scorch of an August sun, with the stifle of a great 
audience coming up from below. I expressed a readi- 
ness to descend. 

"Try a drop into the net," suggested Tom Potter. 
"See, hang by your hands, like this. Keep your legs 
together and lift 'era out stiff. Then — " 

Down he went, and landed easily on his shoulders. 

"Better put the 'mechanic' on him," said Harry, and 
presently young Roy was beside me on the cradle, se- 
curing me to the drop-lines with a double hitch. 

"You want to be sure to lift yer legs," he remarked. 
"I knew a feller that struck the net straight on his feet 
and broke his knees." 

"Don't you worry," said Harry; "if you don't fall 
right, I '11 hold you with the 'mechanic' ' 

Of course, when a man has started at this sort of 
thing he must see it through, so I hung obediently by 
my hands, lifted my legs, and — 

"Now," cried Harry, and instantly, before I had 
time to think or note sensations, I was on my back in 
the net. And I understood what a terrible problem 
it is for a gymnast, falling with such swiftness, to 
turn two or three somersaults in the air and land with 
the body at just the angle of safety, for a shade too 
much one way may mean a broken leg, and a shade 
too much the other way an injured spine. 

For some time after my aerial experience T sat 
around rather limp and white, giving but indifferent 
attention to the breaking in of young Clarence Potter, 
baby of the family, now in his first fortnight's prac- 
tising. He certainly showed a game spirit, this little 
fellow. When his father said, "Jump," he jumped, and 
when the call came for a forward somersault across 
and a half turn he went at it like a veteran, though his 



276 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

wrists must have burned with red chafes where they 
caught him. Of course he had the 'mechanic' on all 
the time. 

"We have to handle him very careful," said his 
father, "he 's so limber. It would n't take much to 
break his back. But he '11 harden up soon. People 
have an idea that gymnasts are supple- jointed. That 's 
all nonsense. A gymnast won't bend as much as an 
ordinary business man. There are too many bunches 
of muscles all over him that keep him stiff. See, feel 
along here." He prodded my hand into his back and 
sides. "Not big muscles, mind, but lots of small ones. 
Say, it 's a fine thing to have your body trained. I 
don't believe there 's a healthier — Hey, there ! Keep 
those legs together. Easy now. Good boy!" The 
little fellow had made a pretty turn and drop to the 
net, and was striding along its meshes, beaming at the 
praise. 

"He '11 make a gymnast," said Potter, "because he 's 
got a head on him, and can fix his mind on what he 's 
doing. Oh, it takes more than body to make a great 
acrobat. It takes brains, for one thing, and heart. 
I believe I '11 be able to train that boy so he can do a 
triple. I mean do it, not get through it in a Lord- 
help-me way. Most people say a triple can't be done 
for a regular act because it 's too uncertain and too 
dangerous. But they used to say that of a double. 
It 's all a matter of taking time enough in the practice. 
That 's the thing, practice. Why, look at us. We 
don't open for months yet, but we 're up here every 
morning all through the winter getting our act down 
so fine, and the time so perfect, that when summer 
comes w r e can't fail." 

"How do you mean, getting the time perfect?" 

"Why, in trapeze work everything depends on judg- 



THE AERIAL ACROBAT 277 

ing time. Just now when you were banging from the 
cradle you could n't see much, could you? Well, we 
can't, either. We have to know when to do things 
by feeling the time they take. Say it 's a long double 
swing, where the men cross and change bars. Each 
man grabs or lets go at the second or part of a second 
when the watch inside him sa)^s it 's time to grab or 
let go. That 's the only watch he has, and it 's the 
only one he needs." 

"And he dives by the sense of time?" 

"That 's right." 

"And does triple somersaults by the sense of time?" 

"Certainly he does. He can't see. What could 
you see, falling and whirling? A gymnast has no dif- 
ferent eyes from any other man. He 's got to feel 
how long he must keep on turning. And it 's good-by 
gymnast if his feeling is a quarter of a second out of 
the way." 

"Do you mean that literally?" 

Mr.' Potter smiled. "I '11 give you a case, and you 
can judge for yourself. There was a fellow named 
Johnnie Howard in the Barnum show. He was doing 
trapeze work with the famous Dunham family, and 
was very ambitious to equal Dunham in all his feats, 
which was a large contract, for Dunham is about the 
finest gymnast in the world. What a pretty triple 
he can do, clean down from the top of the tent, and 
land right every time ! 

"Well, Howard he kept trying triples, and some- 
times he got 'em about right and sometimes he did n't. 
Dunham told him he 'd better stick to doubles until 
he 'd had more practice, but Howard would n't have 
it, and he kept right on. Prob'ly he thought Dun- 
ham was jealous of him. Anyhow, he tried a triple 
one night at Chicago, in the Coliseum, and that was 



278 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

the last triple he ever did try. He misjudged his time 
by a quarter of a turn — that is, he turned three somer- 
saults and a quarter instead of just three — and struck 
the net so that he twisted his spinal column, and he 
died a few weeks later. That last quarter of a turn 
killed him, and it probably did n't take over a tenth 
of a second." 

Here was something to think about. Precision of 
movement to tenths of a second, with no guidance but 
a man's own intuition of time, and a life depending 
on it ! 

"Can a man regulate the speed of his turning while 
he is in the air?" 

"Certainly he can. That 's the first thing you learn. 
If you want to turn faster you tuck up your knees and 
bend your head so the chin almost touches your breast. 
If you want to turn slower you stretch out your legs 
and straighten up your head. The main thing is your 
head. Whichever way you point that your body will 
follow. In our act we do a long drop from the top of 
the tent, where you shoot straight down, head first, for 
fifty or sixty feet and never move a muscle until you 
are two feet over the net. Then you duck your head 
everlastingly quick and land on your shoulders." 

I asked Mr. Potter how long a drop would be pos- 
sible for a gymnast. He thought a hundred feet might 
be done by a man of unusual nerve, but he pointed out 
that the peril increases enormously with every twenty 
feet you add, say to a drop of forty feet. When you 
have dropped sixty feet you are falling thirty-five 
miles an hour ; when you have dropped eighty feet you 
are falling nearly sixty miles an hour. And so on. It 
seemed incredible that a man shooting down, head 
first, at such velocity would wait before turning until 
only two feet separated him from the net. 




CIRCUS PROFESSIONALS PRACTISING A FEAT OF BALANCING. 



280 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

"It can't be," said I, "that in one of these straight 
drops a gymnast is guided only by his sense of time?" 

Potter hesitated a moment. "You mean that he 
uses his eyes to know when to turn ? I guess he does a 
little, although it is mostly sense of time." 

"You would n't get a man to do it blindfolded?" I 
suggested. 

"Not a straight drop, no; but a drop with somer- 
saults, yes." 

"What, two somersaults down to the net, blind- 
folded?" 

"Yes, sir, that would be easy. I tell you a man's 
eyes don't help him when he 's turning in the air. 
Why, Tom and I would throw that boy of mine (Roy- 
etta) across from one to the other, he turning doubles, 
just the same whether he was blindfolded or not. It 
would n't make any difference. 

"I '11 tell you another thing," he continued, "that 
may surprise you. It 's possible for a fine gymnast 
to swing from a bar, say sixty feet above the net, turn 
a back somersault — what we call a cast somersault — 
then shoot straight down head first for thirty feet and 
then tuck up. and turn a forward somersault, landing 
on his shoulders. I could n't do it myself ever since I 
got hurt down in Mexico, but Tom Hanlon could. I 
mention this to show what control a man can get over 
his body in the air. He can make it turn one way, 
then go straight, and then turn the other way." 

After proper expression of wonder at this statement, I 
asked Mr. Potter if something might not go wrong with 
this wonderful automatic time machine that a gym- 
nast carries within himself. Of course there might, 
he said, and that is why there is such need of practice. 
Let a man neglect his trapeze for a couple of months, 
and he would be almost like a beginner. And even 



THE AERIAL ACROBAT 281 

the best gymnasts, he admitted, men in the pink of 
training, are liable to sudden and unaccountable dis- 
turbances of mind or heart that make them for the 
moment unequal to their most familiar feats. 

"I '11 tell you what accounts for the death of most 
gymnasts," he went on. "It \s changing their minds 
while they 're in the air. That 's what we call it, but 
it 's only a name. Nobody knows just what happens 
when a gymnast changes his mind — I mean what hap- 
pens inside him. What happens outside is that he 's 
usually killed. 

"Now there was Billy Batcheller. He was a fine 
leaper, and could do his two somersaults over four ele- 
phants or eight horses with the prettiest lift you ever 
saw. He could do it easy. But one day — we were 
showing out west with the Reynolds circus — as he 
came down the leaping-run he struck the board wrong, 
somehow, and in the turn he changed his mind ; instead 
of doing a double he did one and a half and shot over 
the last horse straight for the ground, head first. One 
second more and he was a dead man; he would have 
broken his neck sure, but I saw him coming and caught 
him so with my right arm, took all the skin off under 
his chin, and left the print of my hand on his breast 
for weeks. But it saved him. And the queer thing 
was he never could explain it — none of them ever can ; 
he just changed his .mind. So did Ladell, who used 
to do doubles from high bars down to a pedestal. He 
made his leap one night, just as usual — it was at 
Toronto, in 1896, I think — and as he turned he 
changed his mind, and I forget how he landed, but it 
killed him all right." 

"Did you ever have an experience of this kind your- 
self?" I asked. 



282 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

"Not exactly," he answered, "and I 'm thankful I 
have n't, but I came near it once in Chicago. It was 
the night after Howard got hurt, and I guess fear — 
just plain, every-day fear — was at the bottom of my 
feeling. My wife and I were doing an act sixty feet 
above the ground, and without a net. I would hang 
by my hands from a couple of loops at the top of the 
Coliseum, and she would hang, head down, from my 
feet, her ankles locked across mine, just a natural lock- 
ing of the feet, with no fastenings and only ordinary 
performing shoes. 

"When I had her that way, a man below would pull 
a drag-rope and get us swinging higher and higher, 
until finally we would come right up to a horizontal. 
I tell you it was a hair-raising thing to see, but until 
this night I had never thought much about the danger. 
I thought of it now, though, as I remembered How- 
ard's fall, and I got so nervous for my wife that I felt 
sure something terrible was going to happen. I was 
just about in the state where a man starts his act and 
can't go through with it, where he changes his mind. 
And you '11 be surprised to hear what gave me heart 
to go on." 

"What was it?" 

"It was the music, sir; and ever since that night I 've 
understood why some generals send their soldiers into 
battle with bands playing. As we stood by the dress- 
ing-room entrance waiting to go on, it seemed as if I 
could n't do it, but when I heard the crash of that 
circus band calling us, and came out into the glare of 
light and heard the applause, just roars of it, why, I 
forgot everything except the pride of my business, and 
up we went, net or no net, and we never did our toe 
swing better than that night. Just the same, I 'd 



THE AERIAL ACROBAT 283 

had my warning, and I soon got another act instead 
of that one ; and — " He hesitated. "Well, sir, to-day 
I would n't take my wife up and do that toe swing the 
way we used to, not for a million dollars. And yet 
she 's crazy to do it." 



IV 



SOME REMARKABLE FALLS AND NARROW ESCAPES 
OF FAMOUS ATHLETES 

AS we finished our talk, Mr. Potter asked me to call 
. some evening at their rooms, on Tenth Street, 
and see a family of trapeze performers in private life. 
I was glad to accept this invitation, and looked in upon 
them a day or two later. Like the other figures in 
these studies of thrilling lives, they presented a mod- 
est, simple picture in their home circle. There if 
nothing in the externals of lion-tamers, steeple-climb- 
ers, divers, balloonists, or gymnasts to betray theii 
unusual calling. Nor is there any heroic sign in eye or 
voice or bearing. They are plain, unpretentious folk, 
for the most part, who do these things and say little 
about them. 

In one room were Tom and Royetta playing check- 
ers, while Clarence, the "kid," weary, no doubt, from 
the morning's practice, lay on a bed storing up resist- 
ance against the next day's shoots and twisters. In 
a room adjoining were Mr. Potter himself and Mrs. 
Potter enjoying the call of a lady acrobat, one of the 
famed Livingstons, trick bicyclists. 

As soon as was fitting, I put the old question to Mr. 
Potter, the question that always interests me, how it 
happened that he became a gymnast, and he went back 
to his Western boyhood and the early longings that 
possessed him to be a performer in the air. Plainly 
he was born with the gymnast instinct, and he ran 

284 



I 



THE AERIAL ACROBAT 



285 




away from home to follow his heart's 
desire. Then he told us how at sev- 
enteen he was traveling with a ten- 
cent show, doing a single trapeze act 
in the ring and an out-of-door free 
exhibition of tight-rope walking 
from canvas top to ground. Once 
he went at a difficult feat so eagerly 
— he was always his own teacher — 
that he fell clean off a trapeze sixty 
feet above ground, and by some kind 
providence that watches over boys 
escaped serious injury. 

"It 's queer about falls," said Mr. 
Potter. "It 's often the little ones 
that kill. Now, there I fell sixty 
feet, and you might say it did n't 
hurt me at all. Another time, show- 
ing in Yucatan, I fell only forty feet, 
and smashed two ribs. And the 
worst fall I ever had was fifteen feet 
at the Olympia, in London. I was driving four horses 
in a tandem race, and was thrown straight on my head. 
That time I nearly broke my neck." 



286 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

"Twenty-five feet is my best fall," put in Mrs. Pot- 
ter, smiling. "I was doing an act on the flying rings, 
and one of 'em broke. Remember that, Harry?" 

His face showed how well he remembered it. "Per- 
haps you won't believe this," he said, "but when I saw 
her falling I could n't move. I was 'tending her in 
the ring, and was n't ten feet from where she struck. 
I could have caught her and saved her if my legs would 
only have moved. But there they were frozen, sir, 
and I just had to stand still and see my wife come 
down smash on her head. Pretty tough, was n't it? 
She lay unconscious for two days — that was at Mo- 
nette, Missouri. Oh, yes, I remember it !" 

I asked Mrs. Potter if she had ever been afraid, 
and she shook her head. Never once, not even at 
Chicago, in the perilous toe swing, when even the other 
gymnasts told her she would certainly be killed. She 
knew her husband would hold her safe, and she really 
enjoyed that toe swing more than any act they ever 
did. 

"I '11 tell you this, though," she admitted, "I would 
be afraid to do these things with any one except my 
husband." 

"Yes, and I 'd be afraid to have her," added Potter. 
"Why, down in Mexico, when I broke my ribs, there 
was a man — a fine gymnast, too — who offered to take 
my place so we would n't lose our salary, but every 
time I saw him practice with my wife it made me so 
nervous I called it off" and let the salary go." 

In spite of these manifest hazards, Potter insists that 
there is no healthier life than a gymnast leads. "We 
never are ill," he said, "we never take cold, we travel 
through all sorts of fever-stricken countries and never 
catch anything, and we always feel good. Look at 
that boy of mine! He 's seventeen years old, and 



THE AERIAL ACROBAT 287 

he 's got a chest on him like a man. Thirty-eight 
inches is what it measures. Why, I can't find a coat 
that '11 fit him." 

He went on to point out some plain advantages, in 
addition to health, that ordinary citizens might derive 
from a moderate knowledge of trapeze work. In a 
fire, for instance, a man so trained would have little 
difficulty in saving himself and others by climbing and 
swinging. And firemen themselves would double their 
efficiency by regular practice on high bars. 

Again, in case of a runaway, a man familiar with 
the trapeze knows how and when to spring for the 
bridle of a plunging horse. Or should he find himself 
almost under the wheels of a trolley-car, he could leap 
for the platform rail and swing up to safety. 

"I '11 give you a case," said Potter, "where the train- 
ing we get helped a good deal. It was a season when 
I was working with the Barnum outfit ; we were show- 
ing in the East, and during the hippodrome races a 
little girl got away from her people somehow, and the 
first thing anybody knew, there she was out on the 
track, with three four-horse chariots not a hundred 
feet off, and coming on a dead run. As the crowd 
saw the child they gave a great 'UfF in fear, and lots 
of women screamed. It was n't in human power to 
stop those horses, and it seemed as if the little tot 
must be killed. 

"She was about half-way across the track when I 
started for her. Lots of men would have started just 
as I did, but very few would have gone at just the 
rig-lit angle to save her. Most men would have tried 
to run straight across, but I was sure the horses would 
trample me and the child, too, if I tried that. So I 
took her on a slant, running across and away from 
the horses, and I caught her little body as a gym- 



288 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

nast knows how, did n't waste any time at it, and then 
— hoo ! — we were over, with the breath of those horses 
on our necks. If it had n't been for the practice I 've 
had judging time and distance, we 'd both have been 
killed that trip." 

I come now to another occasion when I spent two 
profitable hours with the St. Belmos, husband and 
wife, who for years past and in many parts of the 
world have appeared in a trapeze act that calls for the 
greatest nerve and precision of movement. As a cli- 
max to this act, St. Belmo makes a leap and swing 
of forty feet over his audience, springing head first 
through a circle of knives and fire that barely lets his 
body pass, then catching a suspended trapeze that 
breaks away at his touch and carries him on in a long 
sweep, then leaping again, feet first, from this flying 
bar through a paper balloon, where he holds by his 
arms and drops swiftly thirty-five feet to the ground. 

I was surprised to find the hero of this perilous feat 
rather the reverse of athletic in appearance. St. Belmo 
struck me as a pale, thin, almost sickly man. Yet I 
judge it would fare ill with any one who tried to im- 
pose upon him as ah invalid. Over that spare form 
are hard, tireless muscles, and for years to come St. 
Belmo feels equal to leaping this obstacle of blades 
and flame. 

Most people, I suppose, in watching this act would 
imagine the knives to be of wood and tinsel, but I saw 
that they were of steel, and sharp, heavy double-edged 
knives a foot long, murderous weapons made by St. 
Belmo himself out of old saws. And fifteen of these, 
with points turned inward, form the heart through 
which this gaunt yet rather genial gymnast shoots his 
way. 




THROUGH A PAPER BALLOON AT THE END OF A GREAT FEAT. 



19 



290 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

these careers take on more poignant interest when 
things go wrong. Had he ever struck the knives when 
leaping through ? Yes, again and again. He had torn 
his clothes to tatters on them, and lined his body with 
scars. But that was years ago, when he was learning. 
Now he never touched the knives. He could leap 
through them, eyes shut, as surely as a man puts a 
spoon in his mouth without striking his teeth. 

How about falls in the air? Well, he remembered 
two in particular, one at Syracuse, where he missed 
the trapeze because some one was careless in fastening 
a snap-hook that held it, and when he came through 
the blades and flames head first, and reached for the 
bar, the bar had swung away, and he plunged on 
smash down to the ground, and broke both legs. 

"Did n't you look for the bar before you made the 
leap?" I questioned. 

He shook his head. "I never see the bar for the 
dazzle of fire. I know where it must be, and leap for 
that place. If it is n't there, why — " He pointed 
down to his legs, and smiled ruefully. 

He had another fall at Seattle, where he came 
down thirty-five feet* and put both his knees out of 
joint, all because he was thinking of something else as 
he shot toward the balloon, and forgot to throw out his 
arms and catch in the hoop. It was exactly the case 
of a man who might walk over the edge of a house- 
top through absent-mindedness. 

"Ever have a feeling of fear?" I asked. 

"I don't know as you 'd call it fear exactly," he 
began. 

"Yes, it was fear, too," put in his wife, teasing. 
"I 've seen your knees shake so up on the pedestal that 
you almost tumbled off." 

"No wonder my knees shook," protested St. Belmo ; 



THE AERIAL ACROBAT 291 

"they 've been out of joint times enough. Naturally, 
after an accident you feel a little queer for a while; 
but I '11 own up there was once I felt afraid, and it 
was n't long ago, either." 

"I know," said his wife: "up at the Twenty-second 
Regiment Armory." 

"That 's right; it was in December. Remember 
when that bicycle-diver was killed? His name was 
Stark? Poor chap! He was a friend of ours, and 
we were there when it happened. You know, he got 
too much speed on the incline, and struck the far 
edge of the tank instead of the water. That was in 
the afternoon, and the same night we had to go on 
and do our act. I looked at that tank, and then 
I said, 'Boys, I 'm leary about this, but I 'm going to 
do my act. I '11 come down somehow, boys ; you 
watch me.' Honest, I thought I was going to be killed, 
but I got through all right." 

Then he explained that the greatest danger in his 
act is neither at the knives nor at the balloon, but in 
the swift drop after the balloon with the hoop under 
his arms. This hoop, as it goes down, winds up a 
spring overhead that acts as a break on the fall, though 
a very slight one. Just before St. Belmo reaches the 
floor he lifts his arms above the hoop and drops 
through it to the ground, but he must do that at pre- 
cisely the right moment, or he will suffer accident. 
If he drops through too soon he will strike too hard, 
and may break his legs. If he does not drop through 
soon enough, the hoop may jerk his arms out of the 
sockets. And in spite of this formidable alternative 
St. Belmo assured me that for more than a dozen 
years now he has made this drop continually, and 
never failed once. 

Think of a calling that requires a man to steer per- 



292 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

petually, by the closest fraction of a shave, between a 
pair of broken legs and a pair of dislocated arms ! 
Fancy such an alternative as part of the regular after- 
dinner routine ! And then consider what marvelous 
precision must be in these bodies and minds of ours 
when a man can face such a hazard for years and never 
come to grief. 



THE WILD-BEAST TAMER 



WE VISIT A QUEER RESORT FOR CIRCUS PEOPLE 
AND TALK WITH A TRAINER OF ELEPHANTS 

WELL down on Fourth Avenue, below the bird- 
fanciers, the rat-catchers, the antique-shops, and 
the dingy hotels where lion-tamers put up, is "Billy's" 
place, the great rendezvous of the country for circus 
folk, and here any afternoon or evening, especially in 
the dull winter-time, you may find heroes of the flying 
trapeze, bereft of show-ring trappings, playing mo- 
notonous euchre with keepers of the cages, or sitting in 
convivial and reminiscent groups that include every- 
thing from the high-salaried star down to some humble 
tooter in the band at present looking for a job. All 
kinds of acrobats come to "Billy's," all kinds of animal 
men, everybody who has to do with a show, barring 
the owners. If a Norwegian wrestler wants to get 
track of an Egyptian giant he goes to "Billy's." If 
an elephant-trainer needs a new helper he goes to 
"Billy's." It is at once a club, a haven, a post-office, 
and a general intelligence bureau for members of this 
wandering and fascinating profession. 

It was my fortune recently to spend an evening at 
"Billy's," and I had as companion a veteran circus man, 
able to explain things. After taking in the externals, 
which were commonplace enough save for "big- top" 
celebrities ranged along the walls in tiers of photo- 

293 



294 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

graphs, we sat us down where a man in a blue shirt was 
telling how a lioness and three cubs got out of a cage 
somewhere one afternoon just after the performance. 
It seems one of the cubs had been playing with a loose 
bolt, and the first thing anybody knew, there they were, 
all four of them, skipping about free in the menagerie 
tent. The story detailed various efforts to get the 
lioness back into her cage — prodding, lassoing, shout- 
ing — and the total failure of these because she would 
neither leave her cubs nor let them be taken from her. 

Finally, the situation grew serious, for the evening 
performance was coming on, and it was quite sure 
there would be no audience with an uncaged lioness on 
the premises. So it became a matter of business in this 
wise — a lioness worth a few hundred dollars against 
an audience worth a couple of thousand. Word was 
sent to the head of the show, and back came the order, 
"Kill her." In vain the keeper pleaded for one more 
trial ; he would risk a hand-to-hand struggle with hot 
irons. The head of the show said, "No" ; the lioness 
was desperate, and he would n't have his men expose 
their lives. It was a case of "Shoot her, and do it 
quick." 

Of course, that settled it; they did shoot her, and as 
the blue-shirted man described the execution I was 
impressed by his tenderness in speaking of that poor, 
defiant mother, and then of the three little cubs that 
"howled for her a whole month, sir, and looked so sad 
it made us boys feel like murderers, blamed if it 
did n't!" 

Another man, with steely gray eyes and a stubble 
of beard, ventured the opinion that they must have had 
a pretty poor quality of gumption in that outfit, or 
somebody would have got the lioness into her cage. 
He was mighty sure George Conklin would have clone 




HOW THE LIONESS WAS CAPTURED ON THE OPEN PRAIRIE. 



296 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

it. George was over in Europe now handling big cats 
for the Barnum show. There was n't anything George 
did n't know about lions. 

"Why, I '11 give you a case," said he. "We were 
showing out in Kansas, and one night a cage fell off the 
circus train, became unlashed or something as she 
swung round a curve, and when we stuck our heads 
out of the sleeper there were a pair of greenish, burn- 
ing eyes coming down the side of the track, and we 
could hear a ruh-ruh-r-r-r-ruh — something between a 
bark and a roar — that did n't cheer us up any, you 'd 
better believe. Then George Conklin yelled, 'By the 
Lord, it 's Mary! Come on, boys; we must get her!' 
and out we went. Mary was a full-grown lioness, and 
she was loose there in the darkness, out on a bare 
prairie, without a house or a fence anywhere for miles." 

"Hold on," said I; "how did your circus train hap- 
pen to stop when the cage fell off?" 

With indulgent smile, he explained that a circus 
train running at night always has guards on the watch, 
who wave quick lanterns to the engineer in any emer- 
gency. 

"Well," continued the man, "George Conklin had 
that cage fixed up and the lioness safe inside within 
forty minutes by the clock. Do? Why, it was easy 
enough. We unrolled about a hundred yards of side- 
wall tenting, and carried it toward the lioness. It 
was a line of men, holding up a length of canvas so that 
it formed a long, moving fence. And every man car- 
ried a flaming kerosene torch. There was a picture to 
remember, that line of heads over the canvas wall, and 
the flaring lights gradually circling around the lioness, 
who backed, growling and switching her tail — backed 
away from the fire, until presently, as we closed in, we 
had her in the mouth of a funnel of canvas, with 



THE WILD-BEAST TAMER 297 

torches everywhere, except just at her back, where the 
open cage was. Then Conklin spoke sharp to her, just 
as if they were in the ring, and snapped his whip, and 
the next thing Miss Mary was safe behind the bars. 
It was a pretty neat job, I can tell you." 

During this talk a broad-shouldered man had joined 
the group, and my companion whispered that he was 
"Bill" Newman, the famous elephant-trainer. Mr. 
Newman at once showed an interest in the discussion, 
and agreed that there are times when you can do no- 
thing with an animal but kill it. 

"Now, there was old Albert," said he, "a fine ten- 
foot tusker, that I 'd seen grow up from a baby, and I 
was fond of him, too, but I had to kill him. It was in 
'85, and we were showing in New Hampshire. Al- 
bert had been cranky for a long time — never with me, 
but with the other men — and in Nashua he slammed a 
keeper against the ground so hard that he died the next 
morning just as we were coming into Keene. That 
settled it, and at the afternoon performance Mr. Hutch- 
inson announced in the rinf* - that we had an elephant 
on our hands under sentence of death, and he was will- 
ing to turn this elephant over to the local rifle corps 
if they felt equal to the execution. You see, he had 
heard there was a company of sharpshooters in Keene, 
and it struck him this was a good way to be rid of a 
bad elephant, and get some advertising at the same 
time. 

"Well, those Keene riflemen were n't going to be 
bluffed by a showman. They said to bring on the ele- 
phant, and they 'd take care of him. So, after the 
performance I led old Albert back to a piece of woods 
behind the tents, and we hitched tackle to his four 
legs and stretched him out between four trees so he 
could n't move, and then the rifle corps lined up about 



298 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

twelve paces off, ready to shoot. That elephant knew 
he was going to die ; yes, sir, he knew it perfectly well, 
but he was a lot cooler than some of those riflemen. 
Why, there was one fellow on the end of the line shak- 
ing so he could hardly aim. You see, they were afraid 
old Albert would break loose and come at 'em if they 
only wounded him. 

' 'Do you men know where to shoot?' I called out. 

" 'We 're going to shoot at his head,' answered the 
captain. 

" 'All right,' said I ; 'you 'd better send for lanterns 
and more ammunition. You 're liable to be shooting 
here all night.' 

" 'Then, where shall we shoot?' asked the captain. 

" 'That depends,' I answered. 'If you can send 
your bullets straight into his eye at a forty-five degree 
up-slant, you '11 fix him all right. But if you don't hit 
his eye you can shoot the rest of his head full of holes, 
and he won't care. You 've got to reach his brain, 
and that 's a little thing in where I 'm telling you.' 

"This made the captain" do some thinking, for Al- 
bert looked awful big and his eye looked awful small, 
and they did n't want to bungle the job. 'Well,' said 
he, 'is there any other place we can aim at except his 
eye?' 

" 'Aim here,' I told him, and I drew a circle with a 
piece of chalk just back of his left foreleg, a circle about 
as big as your hand. When a man has cut up as many 
elephants as I have he knows where the heart is. But 
most men don't. 

"After this there was a hush, while the whole crowd 
held its breath, and old Albert looked at me out of his 
little eyes as much as to say, 'So you 're going to let 
'em do me after all, are you ?' and then came the sharp 
command, 'Ready, fire!' and thirty-two rifle-balls 



THE WILD-BEAST TAMER 299 

started for that chalk-mark. And how many do you 
think got there ? Five out of thirty-two ; I counted 
'em, but five did the business. Poor old Albert dropped 
without a sound or a struggle." Newman sighed at 
the memory. 

"Is n't there some exaggeration," I asked, "in what 
you said about shooting an elephant full of holes with- 
out killing him?" 

"Exaggeration !" answered Newman. "Not a bit 
of it. Why, there was an elephant named Samson 
with the Cole show, and he got loose once in a town out 
in Idaho and ran through the streets crazy mad, killing 
horses, smashing into houses, ripping the whole place 
wide open. Well, sir, they shot at him with Winches- 
ters, revolvers, shot-guns, every darned thing they had, 
until that elephant was full of lead, but he went off 
all right the next day, and never seemed any the worse 
for it up to the day when he was burned to death with 
the Barnum show at Bridgeport." 

The mention of this catastrophe reminded me of re- 
ports that wild beasts in a burning menagerie are silent 
before the flames, and I asked Mr. Newman if he be- 
lieved it. 

"No, sir," said he; "it is n't true. I was in Bridge- 
port when the Barnum show burned up, and I never 
heard such roaring and screaming. It was awful. 
Even the rhinoceros, which can't make much noise, was 
running around the yard grunting and squealing, with 
flames four feet high shooting up from his back and 
sides. You see, a rhinoceros is almost solid fat, and 
as soon as he caught fire he burned like an oil-tank." 

"Did n't you save any lions or tigers?" 

He shook his head. "Was n't any use trying. 
They 'd have been shot by policemen as fast as we could 
get 'em out. Besides, we could n't get 'em out. We 



300 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

concentrated on elephants, and saved all the herd but 
five. There were free elephants all over Bridgeport 
that night, and a queer thing was we had to look sharp 
that some of the elephants we 'd saved did n't run back 
into the fire. You know how horses will go back into 
a burning stable. Well, elephants are just the same. 
That 's how we lost the white elephant. She walked 
straight into the blaze, when she might just as well 
have walked out through the open door." 

By this time most of the company at "Billy's" had 
gathered about to listen, for Newman was a veteran 
among veterans, and was now in the full swing of 
reminiscence. He went back to his earliest days, back 
to Putnam County, New York, where young men 
might well be drawn to the circus life, so many famous 
showmen has this region produced — "Jim" Kelly and 
Seth B. Howes and Langway and the Baileys. 

"I started with Langway, the old lion-tamer," said 
Newman, "and he was one of the best. I '11 never for- 
get what he told me once when he was breaking in a 
den of lions and tigers — there were three lions and 
two tigers, all full grown and fresh from the jungle. 

" 'Bill,' said he, T 'hi an old man, and this here is my 
last den. I won't break in no more big cats, but I '11 
break this den in so they '11 never work for another 
man after I 'm gone. It '11 look easy what I do, and 
folks '11 want you to tackle 'em, Bill, but don't you 
never do it, for if you do these cats '11 chew ye up sure.' 

"Well, he worked that den in great shape for a year 
or so, and then he died, and I minded his words. I 
let those lions and tigers alone. They hired a lion- 
tamer named Davis to work 'em, and sure enough he 
got chewed up bad, just as the old man said he would, 
and the end of it was that nobody ever did work that 
den again ; it could n't be done, although they 'd been 




MAN IN CAGE WITH LIONS. 



302 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

like kittens with Langway. What he did to 'em 's 
always been a mystery." 

Newman paused, as impressive story-tellers do, and 
then, drawing once more upon his memories, he told 
how a terrible death came to poor "Patsy" Meagher as 
he was drilling a herd of elephants once in winter quar- 
ters at Columbus, Ohio. 

"It was the day before Thanksgiving," he said. 
"I '11 never forget it, and a big bull elephant named 
Syd took the order wrong, went 'right face' instead of 
'left face,' or something, and 'Patsy' got mad and 
hooked him pretty hard. Some think it was 'Patsy's' 
fault, because he gave the wrong order by mistake and 
Syd did what he said, while the other elephants did the 
thing he meant to say. Anyhow, Syd turned on 
'Patsy' and let him have both tusks, brass balls and all, 
right through the body. Killed him in half a minute. 
Why, sir, they took 'Patsy's' watch out through his 
back. That 's the sort of thing you 're liable to run 
up against." 

"Did they kill Syd?" I asked. 

"No; they gave him the benefit of the doubt. You 
see, it ain't square to blame an elephant for obeying 
orders." 

Then came the story of how they killed bad old Pilot 
at the Madison Square Garden back in 1883, fought his 
hard spirit all night long with clubs and pitchforks 
and prods and hot irons, one hundred men flaying and 
jabbing in relays against a poor, bound animal that 
died rather than yield — died without a sound as day 
was breaking. "Yes, sir," said Newman; "he never 
squealed, he would n't squeal, and three minutes before 
he died he nearly killed me with a swing of his trunk; 
Oh, he was game all right, Pilot was." 

Newman came back to the difficulty of working 



THE WILD-BEAST TAMER 303 

animals broken in by another tamer, but he declared 
that the thing can be done in some cases if the new 
tamer has in him that unknown something to which all 
wild beasts submit. His own wife, for example, after 
a dozen years of peaceful married life, determined one 
day that she would make a herd of eight big Asiatic 
elephants obey her, a thing no woman had ever at- 
tempted. And within three weeks she did it, and 
drilled the herd in public for years afterward — in fact, 
became a greater star than her husband. All of which 
was most unusual, and due entirely to her exceptional 
nerve and physical power. "Why, sir," said Newman, 
proudly, "she was six feet tall and built like an athlete. 
She — she only died a few years ago, and — and — " 
That gulp and the catch in his voice told the whole 
story. This was no longer a dauntless elephant-trainer, 
but a stricken, heart-broken man. What now were 
glories of the ring to him — his wife was dead ! 



II 



METHODS OF LION-TAMERS AND THE STORY OF 
BRUTUS'S ATTACK ON MR. BOSTOCK 






THE wild-beast tamer as generally pictured is a 
mysterious person who stalks about sternly in 
high boots and possesses a remarkable power of the eye 
that makes lions and tigers quail at his look and shrink 
away. He rules by fear, and the crack of his whip is 
supposed to bring memories of torturing points and 
red-hot irons. 

Such is the story-book lion-tamer, and I may as well 
say at once that outside of story-books he has small 
existence. There is scarcely any truth in this theory 
of hate for hate and conquest by fear. It is no more 
fear that makes a lion walk on a ball than it is fear 
that makes a horse pull a wagon. It is habit. The 
lion is perfectly willing to walk on the ball, and he has 
reached that mind, net by cruel treatment, but by force 
of his trainer's patience and kindness and superior 
intelligence. 

Of course a wild-beast tamer should have a quick 
eye and a delicate sense of hearing, so that he may be 
warned of a sudden spring at him or a rush from be- 
hind ; and it is important that he be a sober man, for 
alcohol breaks the nerve or gives a false courage worse 
than folly: but the quality on which he must chiefly 
rely and which alone can make him a great tamer — 
not a second-rate bungler — is a genuine fondness for 

3°4 



: ' ; ' iV: ; - 




3 o6 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

his animals. This does not mean that the animals 
will necessarily be fond of the tamer ; some will be fond 
of him, some will be indifferent to him, some will fear 
and hate him. Nor will the tamer's fondness protect 
him from fang and claw. We shall see that there is 
danger always, accident often, but without the fond- 
ness there would be greater danger and more frequent 
accident. A fondness for lions and tigers gives sym- 
pathy for them, sympathy gives understanding of them, 
and understanding gives mastery of them, or as much 
mastery as is possible. What but this fondness would 
keep a tamer constantly with his animals, not only in 
the public show (the easiest part), but in the dens and 
treacherous runway, in the strange night hours, in 
the early morning romp, when no one is looking, when 
there is no reason for being with them except the 
tamer's own joy in it? 

I do not purpose now to present in detail the methods 
of taming wild beasts ; rather what happens after they 
are tamed : but I may say that a lion-tamer always be- 
gins by spending weeks or months in gaining a new 
animal's confidence. Day after day he will stand for a 
long time outside the cage, merely looking at the lion, 
talking to him, impressing upon the beast a general 
familiarity with his voice and person. And each time, 
as he goes away, he is careful to toss in a piece of meat 
as a pleasant memento of his visit. 

Later he ventures inside the bars, carrying some sim- 
ple weapon — a whip, a rod, perhaps a broom, which is 
more formidable than might be supposed, through the 
jab of its sharp bristles. One tamer used a common 
chair with much success against unbroken lions. If 
the creature came at him, there were the four legs in 
his face; and soon the chair came to represent bound- 
less power to that ignorant lion. He feared it and 



3o8 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

hated it, as was seen on one occasion when the tamer 
left it in the cage and the lion promptly tore it into 
splinters. 

Days may pass before the lion will let his tamer do 
more than merely stay inside the cage at a distance. 



I 



il.fi" 




THE LION DESTROYS THE CHAIR. 



Very well ; the tamer stays there. He waits hour after 
hour, week after week, until a time comes when the 
lion will let him move nearer, will permit the touch of 
his hand, will come forward for a piece of meat, and 
at last treat him like a friend, so that finally he may sit 
there quite at ease, and even read his newspaper, as 
one man did. 



THE WILD-BEAST TAMER 309 

Lastly begins the practice of tricks : the lion must 
spring to a pedestal and be fed ; he must jump from one 
pedestal to another and be fed, must keep a certain 
pose and be fed. A bit of meat is always the final 
argument, and the tamer wins (if he wins at all, for 
sometimes he fails) by patience and kindness. 

"There is no use getting angry with a lion," said a 
well-known tamer to me, "and there is no use in carry- 
ing a revolver. If you shoot a lion or injure him with 
any weapon, it is your loss, for you must buy another 
lion, and the chances are that he will kill you, anyway, 
if he starts to do it. The thing is to keep him from 
starting." 

I once had a talk with the lion-tamer Philadelphia 
on the subject of breaking lions, and heard from him 
what need a tamer has of patience. "I have sat in a 
lion's cage," said Philadelphia, "two or three hours 
every day for weeks, yes, for months, waiting for him 
to come out of his sulky corner and take a piece of 
meat from me. And that was only a start toward the 
mastery." 

"Would n't he attack you?" 

Philadelphia smiled. "He did at first, but that was 
soon settled. It is n't hard to best a lion if you go at 
it right. I usually carry a pair of clubs. Some men 
prefer a broom, because the bristles do great work in a 
lion's face, without injuring him. But the finest weapon 
you can use against a fighting lion is a hose of water. 
That stops his fight, only you must n't have the water 
too cold, or he may get pneumonia. You might n't 
think it, but lions are very delicate. In using the clubs, 
you must be careful not to strike 'em hard across the 
back. You 'd be surprised to know how easy it is to 
break a lion's backbone, especially if it 's a young lion." 

In support of this statement that lions are delicate, 



THE WILD-BEAST TAMER 311 

I remember hearing old John Smith, director of the 
Central Park Menagerie, set forth a list of lions' ail- 
ments, and the coddling and doctoring they require. 
Lion medicine is usually administered in the food or 
drink, but there are cases requiring more heroic mea- 
sures, and then the animal must be bound down before 
the doctors can treat him. It should be remembered 
that lions in city menageries are more dangerous than 
circus lions, since they are either wild ones brought 
straight from the jungle and never tamed or rebellious 
ones, anarchist lions that have turned against their 
tamers, perhaps killed them, and have finally been sold 
to any zoological garden that would take them. 

"When we have to rope a lion down to doctor him," 
said Smith, "we drop nooses through the top bars and 
catch his four legs, and let down one around his 
body. Then we haul these fast, and there you are. 
You can feel his pulse or give him stuff or pull out one 
of his teeth or anything." 

"It must be pretty hard to pull a lion's tooth," I 
remarked. 

"Not very. Here 's the forceps I use; you see it 
is n't very big. This is for the upper jaw, and that 
other one is for the lower jaw." 

I made some remark, meant to be facetious, about 
not giving lions gas, but the old man took me up 
sharply. "Certainly we give 'em gas. How else in 
the world do you think we operate on 'em ? They get 
chloroform same as a person. I have a bag for it 
that fits over a lion's head, and pulls up tight with a 
string. In the bag is a sponge saturated with chloro- 
form, and the first you know off goes Mr. Lion into 
quiet sleep, and you can do what you like with him. 
But you have to be mighty careful not to give him too 
much, and look sharp at his heart action, or you '11 



312 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

have a dead lion on your hands. Say, I 've found out 
one thing chloroforming lions that lots of doctors don't 
know. It 's this, that if a lion comes back hard to con- 
sciousness after you 've put him to sleep, you can help 
things along by catching hold of his tail and heaving 
him up on his head. That sends the blood down to his 
brain, where you want it, and pretty soon you '11 see 
his muscles begin to twitch, and back he comes. I told 
a doctor about this once, and he said he 'd done the 
very same thing with patients." 

Coming again to the need of patience, let me quote 
my friend "Bill" Newman. "Why," said he, "I 've 
spent weeks and weeks teaching an elephant to ring a 
bell — just that one thing. You have to sit by him 
hour after hour, giving him the bell in his trunk and 
giving it to him again when he drops it, and then 
again and again for a whole morning, and then for 
many mornings until he gets the idea and rings it right. 
It 's the same way teaching an elephant to fan himself 
or teaching tricks to a clown elephant ; you have to wait 
and wait, and never give up. Once an elephant under- 
stands what you want he '11 do it, but it 's awful hard 
sometimes making 'em- understand." 

"How do you teach them to stand on their heads 
and on their hind legs?" I asked. 

"With the same kind of patience and with tackle. 
Just heave 'em up or roll 'em over the way they 're 
supposed to go and then keep at it. Some learn quicker 
than others. Once in a while you get a mean one, and 
then look out." 

An instance of the affection felt for wild beasts by 
their tamers is offered in the case of Madame Bianca, 
the French tamer, who in the winter of 1900 was with 
the Bostock Wild Animal Show giving daily exhibi- 
tions in Baltimore, where her skill and daring with 



THE WILD-BEAST TAMER 313 

lions and tigers earned wide admiration. It will be 
remembered how fire descended suddenly on this mena- 
gerie one night and destroyed the animals amid fear- 
ful scenes. And in the morning Bianca stood in 
the ruins and looked upon the charred bodies of her 
pets. Had she lost her dearest friends, she could 
scarcely have shown deeper grief. She was in despair, 
and declared that she would never tame another group ; 
she would leave the show business. And when the 
menagerie was stocked afresh with lions and tigers 
Bianca would not go near their cages. These were 
lions indeed, but not her lions, and she shook her head 
and mourned for "Bowzer," the handsomest lioness in 
captivity, and "Spitfire," and "Juliette," and the black- 
maned "Brutus." 

This recalls a story that Mr. Bostock told me, show- 
ing how Bianca's fondness for her lions persisted even 
in the face of fierce attack. It was in Kansas City, and 
for some days Spitfire had been working badly, so that 
on this particular afternoon Bianca had spent two hours 
in the big exhibition cage trying to get the lioness into 
good form. But Spitfire remained sullen and refused 
to do one perfectly easy thing, a jump over a pedestal. 

"Ask Mr. Bostock to please come here," called 
Bianca, finally, quite at her wit's end, with the per- 
formance hour approaching and hers the chief act. To 
go on with Spitfire in rebellion would never do, for the 
spirit of mischief spreads among lions and tigers ex- 
actly as it spreads among children. Spitfire must jump 
over that pedestal. 

Mr. Bostock arrived presently, and at once entered 
the cage, carrying two whips, as is the custom. There 
is something in this man that impresses animals and 
tamers alike. It is not only that he is big and strong, 
and loves his animals, and does not fear them; that 



314 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

would scarcely account for his extraordinary prestige, 
which is his rather because he knoivs lions and tigers 
as only a man can who has literally spent his life with 
them. From father and grandfather he has inherited 
precious and unusual lore of the cages. He was born 
in a menagerie, he married the daughter of a mena- 
gerie owner, he sleeps always within a few feet of 
the dens, he eats, with roars of lions in his ears. And 
his principle is, and always has been, that he will enter 
any cage at any time if a real need calls him — which 
has led to many a situation like that created now by 
Spitfire's disobedience. 

There were many groups in the menagerie at this 
time, each with its regular tamer; and while Bostock, 
as owner and director, watched over all of them, it 
often happened that months would pass without his 
putting foot inside this or that particular cage. And 
in the present case he was practically a stranger to the 
four lions and the tiger now ranged around on their 
pedestals in a semi-circle thirty feet in diameter, with 
big Brutus in the middle and snarling Spitfire at one 
end. 

"Well," said Mr. . Bostock, explaining what hap- 
pened, "I saw that Bianca had made a mistake in han- 
dling Spitfire from too great a distance. She had 
stood about seven feet away, so I stepped three feet 
closer and lifted one of my whips. There were just 
two things Spitfire could do : she could spring at 
me and have trouble, or she could jump over the 
pedestal and have no trouble. She growled a little, 
looked at me, and then she jumped over that pedestal 
like a lady. I had called her bluff. 

"The rest was easy. I put her through some other 
tricks, circled her around the cage a couple of times, 
and brought her back to her corner. Then, as she 
crouched there and snarled at me, I played a tattoo 




BIANCA RESCUES BOSTOCK FROM " BRUTUS." 



316 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

with my whip-handle on the floor just in front of her. 
It was just a sort of flourish to finish off with, and it 
was one thing too much; for in doing this I turned 
quite away from the rest of the group and made Brutus 
think that I meant to hurt the lioness. He said to him- 
self : 'Hullo! Here 's a stranger in our cage taking a 
whip to Spitfire. I '11 just settle him.' And before I 
could move he sprang twenty feet off his pedestal, set 
his fangs in my thigh, and dragged me over to Bianca, 
as if to prove his gallantry. Then the Frenchwoman 
did a clever thing : she clasped her arms around his 
big neck, drew his head up, and fired her revolver close 
to his ear. Of course she fired only a blank cartridge, 
but it brought Brutus to obedience, for that was Bi- 
anca's regular signal in the act for the lions to take 
their pedestals ; and the habit of his work was so strong 
in the old fellow that he dropped me and jumped back 
to his place. 

"There was n't any more to it except that I lay five 
weeks in bed with my wounds. But this will show 
you how Bianca loved those lions : she would n't let 
me lift a hand to punish Brutus. Of course I called 
for irons as soon as J got up, . and, wounded or not, I 
would have taught Mr. Brutus a few things before I 
left that cage if I could have had my way. But Bianca 
pleaded for him so hard — why, she actually cried — 
that I had n't the heart to go against her. She said 
it was partly my own fault for turning my back, — 
which was true, — and that Brutus was a good lion and 
had only tried to defend his mate, and a lot more, with 
tears and teasing, until I let him off, although I knew 
I could never enter Brutus's cage again after leaving 
it without showing myself master. That 's always 
the way with lions : if you once lose the upper hand 
you can never get it back." 



Ill 



BONAVITA DESCRIBES HIS FIGHT WITH SEVEN 

LIONS AND GEORGE ARSTINGSTALL TELLS 

HOW HE CONQUERED A MAD 

ELEPHANT 

IN the course of days spent with Mr. Bostock and his 
menagerie, I observed many little instances of the 
tamer's affection for his animals. I could see it in the 
constant fondling of the big cats by Bostock himself, 
and by Bonavita, his chief tamer, and even by the cage 
grooms. And no matter how great the crush of busi- 
ness, there was always time for visiting a sick lioness 
out in the stable, who would never be better, poor 
thing, but should have all possible comforts for her 
last days. And late one afternoon I stood by while 
Bonavita led a powerful, yellow-maned lion into the 
arena cage and held him, as a mother might hold a 
suffering child, while the doctor, reaching cautiously 
through the bars, cut away a growth from the beast's 
left eye. It is true they used a local anesthetic; but 
even so, it hurt the lion, and Bonavita's position as he 
knelt and stroked the big head and spoke soothing 
words seemed to me as far as possible from secure. 
Yet it was plain that his only thought was to ease the 
lion's pain. 

"I could n't have done that with all my lions," Bona- 
vita said to me after the operation; "but this one is 
specially trained. You know he lets me put my head 
in his mouth." 

317 



318 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

Bonavita is a handsome, slender man, with dark 
hair and eyes, quite the type of a Spanish gentleman; 
and I liked him not only for his mastery of twenty-odd 
lions, but because he had a gentle manner and was 
modest about his work. According to Mr. Bostock, 
Bonavita has but two strong affections : one for his 
old mother, and one for his lions. Occasionally I 
could get him aside for a talk, and that was a thing 
worth doing. 

"People ask me such foolish questions about wild 
beasts," he said one day. "For instance, they want 
to know which would win in a fight, a lion or a tiger. 
I tell them that is like asking which would win in a 
fight, an Irishman or a Scotchman. It all depends 
on the particular tiger you have and the particular lion. 
Animals are just as different as men : some are good, 
some bad ; some you can trust and some you can't 
trust." 

"Which is the most dangerous lion you have?" I 
inquired. 

"Well," said he, "that 's one of those questions I 
don't know how to answer. If you ask which lion has 
been the most dangerous so far, I should say Denver, 
because he tore my right arm one day so badly that they 
nearly had to cut it off. Still, I think Ingomar is my 
most dangerous lion, although he has n't got his teeth 
in me yet ; he 's tried, but missed me. It does n't mat- 
ter, though, what I think, for it may be one of these 
lazy, innocent-looking lions that will really kill me. 
They seem tame as kittens, but you can't tell what 's 
underneath. Suppose I turn my back and one of them 
springs — why, it 's all off." 

Another day he said : "A man gets more confidence 
every time he faces an angry lion and comes out all 
right. Finally he gets so sure of his power that he 



THE WILD-BEAST TAMER 319 

does strange things. I have seen a lion coming at me 
and have never moved, and the lion has stopped. I 
have had a lion strike at me and the blow has just 
grazed my head, and have stood still, with my whip 
lifted, and the lion has gone off afraid. One day in 
the ring a lion caught my left arm in his teeth as I 
passed between two pedestals. I did n't pull away, but 
stamped my foot and cried out, 'Baltimore, what do 
you mean?' The stamp of my foot was the lion's cue 
to get off the pedestal, and Baltimore loosed his jaws 
and jumped down. His habit of routine was stronger 
than his desire to bite me." 

Again, Bonavita explained that there is some strange 
virtue in carrying in the left hand a whip which is 
never used. The tamer strikes with his right-hand 
whip when it is necessary, but only lifts his left-hand 
whip and holds it as a menace over the lion. And it 
is likely, Bonavita thinks, that to strike with that re- 
serve whip would be to dispel the lion's idea that it 
stands for some mysterious force beyond his daring. 

"You see, lions are n't very intelligent," said he; 
"they don't understand what men are or what they 
want. That is our hardest work — to make a lion un- 
derstand what we want. As soon as he knows that he 
is expected to sit on a pedestal he is willing enough to 
do it, especially if he gets some meat ; but it often takes 
weeks before he finds out what we are driving at. 
You can see what slow brains lions have, or tigers 
either, by watching them fight for a stick or a tin cup. 
They could n't get more excited over a piece of meat. 
One of the worst wounds I ever got came from going 
into a lion's den after an overcoat that he had dragged 
away from a foolish spectator who was poking it at 
him.'" 

I finally got Bonavita to tell me about the time when 




bonavita's fight with seven lions in the runway. 



THE WILD-BEAST TAMER 321 

the lion Denver attacked him. It was during a per- 
formance at Indianapolis, in the fall of 1900, and 
the trouble came at the runway end where the two 
circular passages from the cages open on an iron 
bridge that leads to the show-ring. Bonavita had just 
driven seven lions into this narrow space, and was 
waiting for the attendants to open the iron-barred door, 
when Denver sprang at him and set his teeth in his 
right arm. This stirred the other lions, and they all 
turned on Bonavita; but, fortunately, only two could 
reach him for the crush of bodies. Here was a tamer 
in sorest need, for the weight of the lions kept the iron 
doors from opening and barred out the rescuers. In 
the audience was wildest panic, and the building re- 
sounded with shouts and screams and the roars of 
angry lions. Women fainted ; men rushed forward 
brandishing revolvers, but dared not shoot; and for a 
few moments it seemed as if the tamer was doomed. 

But Bonavita's steady nerve saved him. As Denver 
opened his jaws to seize a more vital spot, the tamer 
drove his whip-handle far down into his red throat, 
and then, with a cudgel passed in to him, beat the brute 
back. The other lions followed, and this freed the 
iron door, which the grooms straightway opened, and 
in a moment the seven lions were leaping toward the 
ring as if nothing had happened. And last of the 
seven came Denver, driven by Bonavita, white-faced 
and suffering, but the master now, and greeted with 
cheers and roars of applause. No one realized how 
badly he was hurt, for his face gave no sign. He 
bowed to the audience, cracked his whip, and began 
the act as usual. As he went on he grew weaker, but 
stuck to it until he had put the lions through four of 
their tricks, and then he staggered out of the ring into 
the arms of the doctors, who found him torn with 



322 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

ugly wounds that kept him for weeks in the hospital. 
That, I think, is an instance of the very finest lion- 
tamer spirit. 

Among various meetings with tamers of animals, I 
recall with particular pleasure one afternoon when my 
friend Newman brought to see me a tamer famous in 
his day — George Arstingstall. I knew that Arsting- 
stall was the first man in this country to work lions, 
tigers, leopards, elephants, sheep, monkeys, and various 
other beasts all in a great circular cage. Also that his 
fame had spread across Europe and his daring feats 
been shown from London to Moscow; but I did not 
know what a simple, modest man he was, nor realize 
until then the charm of listening to a couple of circus 
veterans, comrades for years, talking of the old stirring 
days. Here were two men getting on to sixty, yet 
talking with the eagerness of boys about their exploits 
and perils under fang and claw. 

It was : "Say, Bill, do you remember when that bull 
pup caught Topsy by the trunk and stampeded the — " 

"Stampeded the whole business. Do I remember, 
George? Up in Boston. Bing! bang! over the Com- 
mon, and the Old Man wild ! Well I guess. But, say, 
George, that was n't as bad as the stampede in Troy, 
when those four elephants cleaned out the rolling-mill. 
Oh, what a night! Let 's see. There was Nan 
and—" 

"And Tip." 

"Yes, poor old Tip. I strangled him at Bridgeport. 
You remember, George, he would n't take the poison. 
Oh, he was no fool, Tip was n't, and I told the Old 
Man we 'd have to put nooses on him and cut off his 
wind." 

"I know, Bill, the Old Man said it was n't possible 
to strangle an elephant — " 



THE WILD-BEAST TAMER 323 

"'And say, George, I had his wind shut off inside of 
three minutes after the boys began to haul. Oh, you 
can't beat three sheave-blocks, George, for finishing 
off a bad tusker. Well, this night in Troy those 
four elephants went sailing through this rolling-mill, 
trumpeting like mad, right over the hot iron, scaring 
those Irishmen blue, and then smashed down a steep 
refuse bank into the mud. Oh, what looking ele- 
phants ! Nan had her legs all burned, and — " 

"I know, and say, Bill, do you remember where I 
found Tip? Three miles out of Troy, standing up in 
a corn-field sound asleep, and two little boys on a rail 
fence looking at him. He 'd knocked over a shanty 
and smashed open a barrel of whisky — a whole barrel, 
Bill — and there he was sound asleep. When I saw 
those little boys I made up my mind I 'd found Tip. 
' 'What ye lookin' at, little boys ?' I sung out. 
' 'El'phunt, mister,' says one of the boys, sort of 
careless like, just as if it was a common thing in Troy 
for elephants to be asleep in corn-fields." 

"I know, that 's the way little doa'S act," remarked 
Newman, sagaciously. "Say, George, tell about the 
time you took that car-load of animals over the Alle- 
ghanies." 

After some preliminaries, Mr. Arstingstall responded 
to the invitation, and I heard a story that Victor Hugo 
might have turned into a masterpiece of description. 

It was back in the winter of 1874, and circus trains 
were not fitted up as completely then as they are to-day. 
Arstingstall was in charge of a car packed with a med- 
ley of animals — lions and tigers in cages, some camels, 
some boxes of monkeys, some hyenas, a sacred bull 
from Tibet, and a young male elephant recently brought 
from Africa and as yet untrained. All these were on 
their way to Wisconsin, where the show was to make 



324 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

its spring opening in a couple of weeks, during which 
Arstingstall was expected to break the young elephant 
for driving in a chariot race. 

At one end of the car was a stove against the bitter 
weather, but the elephant was chained at the other end, 
and as they came into the mountain region Arstingstall 
noticed that the elephant was suffering from cold, and 
at the first stop sent a man out for half a bucket of 
whisky, which he filled up with water and gave to the 
shivering animal. There is no use giving an elephant 
whisky unless you give him enough. 

Now came a run of an hour and a half without stop, 
and during this time Arstingstall was alone in the ani- 
mal-car, and about as busy as he ever expects to be on 
this earth. The trouble began when he unloosed the 
elephant's chains to lead him nearer the stove, for it 
looked as if his ears might freeze, as happens. Indeed, 
an elephant's ears will sometimes freeze so hard that 
big pieces drop off, while a frozen tail has been known 
to drop off entirely. 

Against such chances Arstingstall wished to take 
precautions, so he led the elephant down the car, 
through the jumble 'of animals and cages, all the less 
prepared for mischief as this was rather a smallish 
elephant, not over six feet at the shoulder and show- 
ing only half-grown tusks. But they were sharp. 
Whether it was the whisky taking violent effect or 
some sudden hatred for his keeper — at any rate, that 
elephant, long before he reached the stove, set forth 
upon a murderous campaign the like of which Arsting- 
stall had never known. Before he realized the danger, 
he felt the creature's trunk twisting around his neck, 
and he was hurled violently to the floor. There he lay 
helpless, while the elephant hesitated, one might fancy, 



THE WILD-BEAST TAMER 325 

whether to kneel on him and crush the life out or run 
him through with his tusks. 

In that moment's pause Arstingstall made a last de- 
spairing effort, did the only thing he could do, sunk 
his teeth into the fleshy finger that curls around the end 
of an elephant's trunk and covers the opening so that 
no invading mouse may enter and work destruction. 
In all an elephant's great body, there is no spot so sen- 
sitive as this finger, and, with a scream of pain, the 
animal loosed his hold, whereupon Arstingstall sprang 
behind one of the cages. But the elephant was after 
him in a moment, swinging his trunk and trumpeting 
black murder. Arstingstall dodged behind the camels, 
behind the sacred bull, behind the stove. The ele- 
phant followed him everywhere, profiting by his small- 
ness, and where he could not go himself he sent his 
curling trunk. Arstingstall, out of breath, climbed on 
top of the lion's cage, thinking to find some respite, but 
the red-ended trunk pursued him. Once more he tried 
biting tactics, and as the reaching finger swept along 
the cage top he seized it again in his teeth, and this 
time took a piece clean out of it, which was not pleas- 
ant for him, and less so for the elephant. 

Now came a truce of some minutes, during which 
the elephant put forth screaming challenges, but kept 
at a distance, and allowed Arstingstall to reach the 
bunks beside the monkeys' cages. From the topmost 
bunk opened a trap-door in the car roof, the only exit, 
as the sliding side-doors were bolted. He might es- 
cape here to the back of the train, but that would leave 
a mad elephant in possession of the car, a thing not to 
be thought of. Thus far the elephant's rage had been 
directed solely against his keeper, but, the keeper gone, 
he might turn to destroying the other animals, might 



326 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

kill the sacred bull, or smash open the lions' cages — 
there was no telling what he might do. Arstingstall 
saw that his duty lay in that car. Whatever came, 
he must — 

Crash ! came the elephant again, and the lower berth 
was a wreck. And now the din became infernal with 
the roaring and bellowing and chattering of the other 
animals. Arstingstall did some quick thinking. There 
was sure death before him, unless he could somehow 
conquer this frenzied creature, whose rushes, coming 
harder and harder, must soon batter down the car, for 
all its stout oak timbers. Oh, for a weapon, a prod 
of some sort, a — like a flash the thought came; down 
at the other end was the pitchfork used for throwing 
fodder. There was his chance ; he must get that pitch- 
fork. 

For the next hour it was a fight, man against ele- 
phant, for the winning and holding of that pitchfork. 
There was the whole story, and some day I hope to give 
its details, the moves and counter-moves, the strategy of 
brute against human, the conflict of brain against crude 
force. Arstingstall won, but by what patience and quiet 
nerve he alone knows. Foot by foot, cage by cage, he 
worked his way down the length of that car, the ele- 
phant now on the defensive, one would say, as if he 
realized what was planning, the man watching, reso- 
lute, biding his time, ready for a sudden rush, forced 
now and again to use his teeth upon that murderous 
trunk. 

Finally, he got the pitchfork, and for a moment — 
what a moment that was ! — held four prongs of flash- 
ing steel before the elephant's eyes, red-burning, unsub- 
missive. It was all over now, the battle was won, the 
animal knew, and stood still awaiting the blow. Down 
came the weapon, and right .through the trunk went 



THE WILD-BEAST TAMER 327 

those four sharp points, down into the timbers under 
foot. Then Arstingstall braced the handle under a 
wall-beam, so that the elephant was nailed fast to the 
floor, nose down. And then the brute squealed his 
submission. 

Three weeks later Arstingstall drove that elephant, 
perfectly broken, in a chariot race, and for years after 
there was not a better little bull in the herd than he. 



IV 



WE SEE MR. BOSTOCK MATCHED AGAINST A 

WILD LION AND HEAR ABOUT THE 

TIGER RAJAH 

WHENEVER I made the round of cages with Mr. 
Bostock I was struck by the fierce behavior of a 
certain male lion with brown-and-yellow mane, — 
"Young Wallace," they called him, — who would set up 
;a horrible snarling as soon as we came near, and rush 
at the bars as if to tear them down. And no matter 
how great the crowd, his wicked yellow eyes would 
always follow Bostock, and his deep, purring roar 
would continue and break into furious barks if the 
tamer approached the bars. Then his jaws would 
open and the red muzzle curl back from his tusks, and 
again and again he would strike the floor with blows 
that would crush a horse. 

"Does n't love me, does he?" said Bostock, one day. 

"What 's the matter with him?" I asked. 

"Why, nothing; only he 's a wild lion — never been 
tamed, you know ; and I took him in the ring one day. 
He has n't forgotten it — have you old boy ? Hah !" 
Bostock stamped his foot suddenly, and Young Wal- 
lace crouched back, snarling still, a picture of hatred 
and fear. 

"Yes," went on Bostock, "he 's wild enough. You 
see, after the fire, I had to get animals from pretty 
much everywhere, and get 'em quick. Did some lively 
cabling, I can tell you; and pretty soon there were 

328 



THE WILD-BEAST TAMER 329 

lions and tigers and leopards and — oh, everything from 
sacred bulls down to snakes, chasing across the ocean, 
and more than half of them had been loose in the jungle 
six months ago. It was a case of hustle, and we took 
what they sent us. Then we had fun breaking 'em in. 
Ask Madame Morelli if we did n't. She 's in the hos- 
pital now from the claws of that fellow." He pointed 
to a sleepy-looking jaguar. 

"Tell you how I came to take this wild lion into the 
ring. I had a press-agent who had been announcing 
out West what a wonder I was with wild beasts, and 
how I was n't afraid of anything on legs, and so on. 
That was all very well while I was in Baltimore; but 
when I joined my other show after the fire, of course 
I had to live up to my reputation. And. when they got 
up a traveling men's benefit out in Indianapolis and 
asked me to go into the ring with Young Wallace, 
why, there was n't anything to do but go in. It 
was n't quite so funny, though, as it seemed, for I 
might as well have taken a lion fresh from the wilds 
of Africa." Mr. Bostock smiled at the memory. 

"Well, I did the thing, and got through all right. 
Young Wallace has n't forgotten what happened to 
him. I got the best of him by a trick : had a little 
shelter cage placed inside the big arena cage, and at 
first I stood irt the small one, and let the lion come at 
me. Oh, you 'd better believe he came! I thought 
sure he 'd jump clean over the thing and land on me ; 
for there was no roof to my cage — only sides of wire 
netting. He did n't quite do it, though; and as soon 
as I saw he was getting rattled I stepped out quick and 
went at him hard with whip and club. And I drove 
him all over the ring, and the people went crazy, for 
he was the maddest lion you ever saw. 

"That was all right as far as it went, but the people 



330 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

wanted more. They got to be out-and-out bloodthirsty 
there in Indianapolis. Wanted me to go in the ring 
with Rajah, that big tiger. See, over there! Come 
up, Rajah. Beauty, is n't he? Does n't pay any special 
attention to me, does he? Nearly killed me, just the 
same. Look !" He lifted his cap and showed wide 
strips of plaster on his head. 

"Point about Rajah was that he 'd killed one of my 
keepers a couple of weeks before. Poor fellow got in 
his cage by mistake. And now these Indianapolis 
folks wanted to see me handle him. Between you and 
me, this keeper was n't the first man Rajah had killed, 
and I did n't care much for the job. As for my wife — 
well, you can imagine how she felt when she heard I 
was going in with Rajah. 

"On the morning of the performance I decided to 
have a rehearsal, and called on a few picked men to 
help me. I knew by the way he had killed his keeper 
that Rajah would go at my head if he attacked me 
at all, so I rigged up a mask'of iron wire, and wore this 
strapped over my head like a little barrel. Then I 
drove him into the arena and began, while the others 
looked on anxiously.. It 's queer, sir, but that tiger 
went through his tricks as nice as you please, back 
and forth, up on his pedestal and down again, every- 
thing just as he used to do in the old days before he 
went bad. Never balked, never turned on me; just as 
good as gold. 

"Soon as I was satisfied I drove him across the bridge 
and down the runway toward his den. I came about a 
dozen feet behind him, carrying a long wooden shield, 
as we generally do in a narrow space. Rajah reached 
his cage all right, and went in. You see, he could n't 
go down the runway any farther, for the door opening 
outward barred the passage. Behind that door I had 



"1 ! 




332 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

stationed a keeper, with orders to close it as soon as 
Rajah was inside; but Rajah went in so silently that 
the keeper did n't know it, the peep-holes in the door 
being too high for him to see very well. The result 
was that the cage door stood open for a few seconds 
after the tiger had gone in. It seems a little thing, 
but it nearly cost me my life; for when I came up 
Rajah's head was right back of the open door, and 
when I reached out my hand to close the door he sprang 
at me, and in a second had me down, with his teeth 
in my arm and his claws digging into my head through 
openings in the mask. 

"Then you 'd better believe there was a fight in that 
runway ! The keepers rushed in ; Bonavita rushed in. 
They shot at him with revolvers, they jabbed him with 
irons, they pounded at him with clubs ; and one of the 
blows that Rajah dodged knocked me senseless. Well, 
they got me out finally. I guess the mask saved my 
life. But I did n't take Rajah into the ring that even- 
ing, and Rajah won't be seen in the ring any more. 
He 's made trouble enough. Why, the things I could 
tell you about that tiger would fill a book." 

Some of these things he did tell me, for I brought 
the talk back to Rajah whenever the chance offered. 
I well remember, for instance, the occasion when I 
heard how Rajah once got out of his cage and chased 
a quagga — one of those queer little animals that are 
half zebra and half mule. It was late at night, and 
we had entered the runway, Mr. Bostock and I, after 
the performance, for he wanted me to realize the perils 
of this narrow boarded lane that circles all the dens 
and leads the lions to the ring. It is indeed a terrify- 
ing place — a low, dimly lighted passage, curving con- 
stantly, so that you see ahead scarcely twenty feet, and 
are always turning a slow corner, always peering ahead 



THE WILD-BEAST TAMER 333 

uneasily and listening! What is that? A soft tread? 
The glow of greenish eyeballs? Who can tell when a 
bolt may slip or a board give way? So many things 
have happened in these runways ! Of course a lion has 
no business to be out of his den, but — but suppose he 
is? Suppose you meet him — now — there! 

Well, it was here that I heard the story. Bonavita, 
it appears, was standing on the bridge one morning 
when there arose a fearful racket in the runway, and, 
looking in, he saw the quagga tearing along toward 
him. He concluded that some one had unfastened the 
door, and was just preparing to check the animal, when 
around the curve came Rajah in full pursuit. Bona- 
vita stepped back, drew his revolver, and, as the tiger 
rushed past, fired a blank cartridge, thinking thus to 
divert him from the quagga. But Rajah paid not the 
slightest heed, and in long bounds came out into the 
arena hard after the terrified quadruped, which was 
galloping now with the speed of despair. A keeper 
who was sweeping clambered up the iron sides and 
anxiously watched the race from the top. Bonavita, 
powerless to interfere, watched from the bridge. 

Of all races ever run in a circus this was the most 
remarkable. It was a race for life, as the quagga knew 
and the tiger intended. Five times they circled the 
arena, Rajah gaining always, but never enough for a 
spring. In the sixth turn, however, he judged the dis- 
tance right, and straightway a black-and-yellow body 
shot through the air in true aim at the prey. Where- 
upon the quagga did the only thing a quagga could do 
— let out both hind legs in one straight, tremendous 
kick; and they do say that a quagga can kick the eyes 
out of a fly. At any rate, in this case a pair of nervous 
little heels caught the descending tiger squarely under 
the lower jaw, and put him to sleep like a nice little 




THE TIGER "RAJAH" KICKED BY THE QUAGGA. 



THE WILD-BEAST TAMER 335 

lullaby. And that was the end of it. The quagga 
trotted back to its cage, Bonavita put up his revolver, 
the frightened sweeper climbed down from the bars, 
and Rajah was hauled back ignominiously to his den. 

Here we have three instances showing the extreme 
importance of little things in a menagerie. A keeper 
opens door No. 13 instead of door No. 14, and is 
straightway killed. A screw is loose in a bolt fasten- 
ing, and, presto ! a tiger is at large. A watcher at a 
peep-hole looks away for a moment, and a life goes into 
jeopardy. It is always so ; and I will let Mr. Bostock 
tell how a little thing gave Rajah his first longing to 
kill. 

"It was several years ago," said he, "when I was 
running a wagon show in England. I remember we 
were about a mile and a half out of a certain town when 
this thing happened. For some reason Rajah had been 
transferred to a bear-wagon, and we ought to have ex- 
amined it more carefully, for bears are the worst fel- 
lows in the world to damage a cage by ripping up the 
timbers; it seems as if nothing can resist their claws 
and teeth. And this particular cage was in such bad 
shape that Rajah managed to get out of it. I knew 
something must be wrong when I saw the big elephant- 
wagon that headed the procession go tearing away with 
its six horses on a dead run under the driver's lash. 
No wonder the driver was scared, for he had turned 
his head and seen the two draft-horses that followed 
him down on the ground, with Rajah tearing at one 
of them, and the other one dead. 

"It was n't a pretty sight when we got there, and it 
was n't an easy job, either, capturing Rajah. I don't 
know what we should have done if it had n't been for 
a long-haired fellow in the show called 'Mustang Ned/ 
who came up with a coil of rope and lassoed the tiger. 



336 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

Then we tangled him up in netting, and finally got him 
into one of the shifting-cages. But after that he was 
never the same tiger. You would n't think there was 
a time when Rajah used to ride around the tent on an 
elephant's back, with only a little black boy to guard 
him!" 

"What, outside the iron ring?" 

"Yes, sir, right among the women and children. 
He did that twice a day for over a 3^ear. Might be 
doing it yet if the black boy had n't been so careful of 
his white trousers." 

"His white trousers?" 

"That 's right. You see, this boy rode on the ele- 
phant, behind Rajah, and he wore long black boots 
and a fine white suit. Made quite a picture. Only he 
did n't like to rub his trousers against the tiger, for an 
animal's back is naturally oily; so he used to tuck his 
legs under a lion's skin that Rajah rode on, and wrap 
it around him like a carriage-robe. 

"Well, one day as they were going around the nig- 
ger lost his balance and tumbled off the elephant, pull- 
ing the lion's skin with him, and of course that dragged 
Rajah along, too. The first thing we knew, there was 
a big tiger on the ground, and people running about 
and screaming. Pleasant, was n't it? 

"In another minute we 'd have had a panic; but by 
good luck I was there, and caught Raj ah quickly around 
the neck and held him until the others got a rope on him. 
Then we had a time getting him back on the elephant. 
First I tried to make him spring up from a high pedes- 
tal, but he would n't spring. Next I had them work 
a ladder under Rajah, so that he sat on it; and then, 
with two men at one end and me at the other, we 
lifted him slowly level with our shoulders, level with 
our heads, and just there the tiger gave a vicious growl, 



338 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

and the two men lowered their end. That made him 
work up toward my end, and in a second I had Rajah's 
face close to my face, and both my hands occupied with 
the ladder. I could n't do a thing, and the only ques- 
tion was what he would do. He looked at me, looked 
at the elephant, and then struck out hard and quick, 
missing me only by a hair; in fact, he did n't miss me 
entirely, for one of his claws just reached the corner 
of my eye- — see, I have the scar still. But he jumped 
on the elephant, and we kept the mastery that day. 
Still, it was bad business, and I saw we could n't 
take such chances again. That was Rajah's last ride." 



V 



WE SPEND A NIGHT AMONG WILD BEASTS 

AND SEE THE DANGEROUS LION 

BLACK PRINCE 

THE general opinion among wild-beast tamers is 
that the tiger is more to be feared than the lion. 
The one will kill a man as easily as the other, but the 
lion gives fair warning of his murderous intention by 
rushing at his victim with a roar, whereas the tiger, 
true representative of the cat tribe, sneaks up with sem- 
blance of affectionate purr, only to set his fangs sud- 
denly into the very life of his victim. The lion has 
somewhat greater muscular power than the tiger, but 
the latter has greater quickness. 

The tamer Philadelphia told me once that he had 
seen a lion fasten his fangs in the shoulder of a dead 
horse and drag the carcass, weighing perhaps a thou- 
sand pounds, a distance of twenty feet. If a lion and a 
strong horse were to pull in opposite directions, the 
horse would drag the lion backward with comparative 
ease ; but if the lion were hitched behind the horse, fac- 
ing in the same direction, and were allowed to exert 
his strength in backing, he could easily pull the horse 
down upon his haunches, so much greater is his 
strength when exerted backward from the hind legs 
than in forward pulling. 

A lion springing through the air from a distance of 
six feet would knock down a horse or bullock with a 
single blow of his forearm, backed by the momentum 

339 



340 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

of his three hundred pounds' weight, and a full-grown 
lion in the jungles will jump twenty-five or thirty feet 
on the level from a running start. In captivity the 
same lion would clear a distance about half as great. 
A lion can jump over a fence eight or ten feet high, 
but not at a bound. He catches first with his fore- 
legs, and drags his body after him. Tigers will jump 
a trifle higher than lions. But of all wild animals, the 
leopards are the greatest jumpers, being able to hurl 
their lithe and beautiful bodies, curled up almost into a 
ball, to extraordinary heights. They bound with ease, 
for instance, from the floor of the cage so as to touch 
a ceiling twelve feet high. 

For a short distance a lion or a tiger will outrun a 
man, and can equal the speed of a fast horse, but they 
lose their wind at the end of half a mile at the most. 
They have little endurance, and are remarkably weak 
in lung power. Their strength is the kind which is 
capable of a terrific effort for a short time. It would 
take six men, for instance, to hold a lion down in his 
first struggles, even after his legs were tied. 

One day Philadelphia, wishing to test the affection 
popularly supposed to. exist between a lion and a mouse, 
put a mouse in the cage of a full-grown Nubian lion. 
The lion saw the mouse before it was fairly through 
the bars, and was after him instantly. Away went the 
little fellow, scurrying across the floor and squealing 
in fright. When he had gone about ten feet, the lion 
sprang, lighting a little in front of him. The mouse 
turned, and the lion sprang again. This was repeated 
several times, the mouse traversing a shorter distance 
after each spring of the lion. It was demonstrated 
that a lion is too quick for a mouse, at least in a large 
cage. 

Finally the mouse stood still, trembling, while the 



THE WILD-BEAST TAMER 341 

lion studied it with interest. Presently he shot out 
his big paw, and brought it down directly on the 
mouse, but so gently that the little fellow was not 
injured in the least, though held fast between the 
claws. Then the lion played with him in the most ex- 
traordinary way, now lifting his paw and letting the 
mouse run a few inches, now stopping him as before. 
Suddenly the mouse changed his tactics, and, instead 
of running when the lion lifted his paw, sprang into 
the air straight at the lion's head. The lion, terrified, 
gave a great leap back, striking the bars with all his 
weight, and shaking the whole floor. Then he opened 
his great jaws and roared and^roared again, while the 
little mouse, still squealing, made his escape. Of the 
two, the lion was the more frightened. 

Speaking of Philadelphia, I used to wonder, as I 
watched him manage Black Prince on horseback, 
whether the lion was really in earnest as he struck 
and roared with such apparent viciousness, or whether 
he had simply been trained to play a part. Certainly 
the lion looked as if his one desire was to kill the little 
man who teased him so with rod and whip, smiling all 
the time under his yellow mustache. 

One night Black Prince sprang ten feet through the 
air straight at Philadelphia, who saved his life by 
dodging, but did not escape the sweep of the lion's 
forearm. No one knew that, however, for the tamer 
showed no sign of injury, but brought his heavy whip 
down with a stinging cut over the lion's head, and went 
through the "act," holding a handkerchief to his face 
now and then, but smiling as before. When he left 
the ring, it was found that one of the lion's claws had 
laid his cheek open almost from eye to lip. 

"He meant to kill me that trip," said Philadelphia, 
as they bound up his face. 



342 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

"We will never show that lion again," declared the 
manager, much excited. 

"Oh, 3^es, we will !" answered the wounded tamer. 
"I will make him work to-morrow as usual." And 
he did, teasing and prodding him that day as never 
before, as if daring him to do his worst. 

The climax was reached one night in January, when 
Black Prince came within an ace of killing this daring 
tamer, and certainly would have done so had not his 
attention been diverted just at the critical moment by 
the horse he was riding. He paused in the very act of 
springing, as if undecided whether to destroy the man 
or the horse, and that pause put the tamer on his guard, 
while the watchful grooms rushed in through the iron 
gates and drove Black Prince from the ring. 

Speaking to me afterward of that night, Philadel- 
phia said : "I knew the critical moment had come, and 
that it would not do to push matters any farther. 
If I had made Black Prince do his jump when he 
balked and turned on me, he would have sprung at my 
throat, caught me between his fore paws, and fastened 
his fangs in my neck or breast. It would have been 
impossible for ten men to have dragged him off, and I 
should have been killed there in the sight of the spec- 
tators, just as my nephew, Albert Krone, was killed in 
Germany some years ago by a Russian bear." 

In conclusion, let me recall a night that I spent 
among the wild beasts of the famous Hagenbeck me- 
nagerie. That, by the way, is a thing worth doing if 
one values strange sensations. 

It is two hours after midnight. The snow lies crisp 
under foot, the stars and electric lights shine quietly 
in the still night. Before me rises a big building, its 
walls pictured with springing lions and pyramids of 
tigers. As I enter, a long roar from within tells me 



THE WILD-BEAST TAMER 343 

that the animals are not all asleep. The roar, a lion's, 
comes three times with increasing volume, and at the 
fourth is answered by another of equal volume; then 
two lions roar together, the sounds coming quicker and 
quicker, with an increasing staccato that ends finally 
in hoarse barks. 

Taking a little alarm-clock that the night watchman 
loans me, I go back among the cages, where I am to 
keep strange vigil. A small wooden door at the right 
takes me into an open space ranged with cages and 
wagons, the former containing some barking dogs. 
From here I pass into a circular shed, where are more 
wagons and dogs, and at the farther end by the wet, 
sticky-looking seals I reach a small door leading into a 
low passage, beyond which are the wild beasts. 

I push aside a curtain covering the entrance against 
drafts, and see before me a picture never dreamed 
of by humdrum New-Yorkers sleeping within stone's 
throw. The cages, ranged in double row, form* an 
alleyway, divided at intervals by gas-stoves, on which 
water is heating. In front of the big group of lions 
and tigers sleeps one of the grooms, stretched on a cot 
bed. He wears a pink shirt and blue drawers, and his 
bare feet are turned to the gas-stove, which burns night 
and day. Another groom sleeps farther on, beside the 
Tibet goats, and still another near the ponies, oppo- 
site the small cage of the lioness Mignon. They sleep 
so soundly that a riot would scarcely waken them ; yet, 
by some subtle sense, they would be on the alert in 
an instant if anything were wrong in the cages. 

Three animals rouse themselves as I step into the 
darkness which shrouds the big cage — the lion Yellow 
Prince is one of them — and as I approach the bars three 
pairs of burning eyes glare at me through the shadows. 
I venture to turn on the electric light and peer into 



344 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

the cage. Here are three leopards, the three royal 
Bengal tigers, and a full-grown lion, making no more 
noise between them than a sleeping child. 

I return to the farther end of the shed, where the 
five-year-old lioness Helena, alone in her cage, is walk- 
ing back and forth drowsily, as if on the point of drop- 
ping off for her night's rest. Indeed, she does this 
presently, turning on her side, and stretching her legs 
out perfectly straight, with no bend at the joints. It 
was Helena who, in a fit of nervous fright a year or 
two ago, sprang upon Betty Stuckart, the famous 
prize beauty, and nearly killed her. Since then she has 
lived in solitary confinement. 

The stillness now would be absolute but for a very 
curious sound, which comes out of the gloom be- 
yond the big cage of leopards and tigers. It is the 
elephant Topsy sleeping. There is no stranger sight 
in a menagerie than that of an elephant asleep. The 
huge legs are bent to right angles at the knees, the 
trunk is curled into the mouth, and the whole suggests 
a shapeless mound of mud or clay, or a half-inflated 
balloon. Head and tail are alike; the ears lie flat; 
the eyes are quite concealed in wrinkled flesh, but 
from somewhere within this seemingly dead mass 
comes a long, hissing sound, like the exhaust from a 
steam-pipe. This sound continues for several seconds 
and then stops, to be repeated after an interval of 
silence. 

So complete is the illusion of the sleeping elephant's 
not being alive at all, but only a mound of dead matter, 
that, abstractedly, I set the alarm-clock down upon the 
flat bone of the forehead. No sooner have I done so 
than I spring back startled, leaving the clock ticking 
on the elephant's head. There has been no noise or 
movement, no indication of displeasure, no effort to do 




W Mh% <HL 



A ROYAL BENGAL TIGER. 



346 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

me harm. But suddenly, in the middle of the huge, 
mud-colored mass there has appeared a round, red 
circle about two inches in diameter. The elephant has 
simply opened his eye. The eye does not roll, or move, 
or wink. It merely remains open on me for a few sec- 
onds, a round, staring circle, and then disappears as 
suddenly as it came. 

Leaving Topsy, I resume my wanderings among 
the cages. The whole place is asleep, and I am seized 
with intense desire to awaken something. I take a 
long straw, and tickle Black Prince on his black nose. 
His eyes open instantly, and the heavy paw swings 
round like the working-beam of an engine, only more 
quickly, to crush the straw for its impertinence. I 
tickle him again, and again he strikes, with force 
enough to knock down a horse. As I continue, his 
blows grow quicker and heavier, and his big tusks 
snap at the troublesome straw. Finally, in despera-' 
tion, he starts up, and, throwing back his magnificent 
head, looks at me out of his brown, wicked eyes, lifts 
his chin, curls clown his lower lip a little, and bellows 
forth a low, plaintive sound, more like the mooing of a 
cow than the roar of a lion. Then, apparently ashamed 
of this uninspiring sound, he shakes his mane and roars 
in genuine lion fashion. 

So the hours of the night pass, and at last, having 
seen everything and grown weary of experiments, I 
seat myself on a trunk near Black Prince's cage, and 
am soon buried in my meditations. The tips of the 
tigers' noses begin to change from red to green, and 
then back again; the leopards' tails are no longer 
straight, but end in snake-heads with forked tongues 
darting out. I overhear curious conversations among 
the lions, and presently men in blue shirts and pink 
drawers come marching past, each carrying an alarm- 



THE WILD-BEAST TAMER 347 

clock. Then a curious thing" happens : with a sweep 
of her trunk, the elephant Topsy lifts Jocko, the mon- 
key, out of his red box. 

"You must unlock the cages," says Topsy. 

"All right," says jocko. And he does. 

Then all the lions, tigers, leopards, boar-hounds, 
Tibet goats, bears, ponies, and wild boars join in the 
procession, while the alarm-clocks beat time. Black 
Prince walks first, and, presently wheeling the line 
toward me, lifts his fore paw and says : 

"Mem Herr, it is six o'clock." 



THE DYNAMITE WORKER 

i 

THE STORY OF SOME MILLIONAIRE HEROES AND 
THE WORLD'S GREATEST POWDER EXPLOSION 

THERE is illustrated in this career of the explosive 
maker a splendid fact touching courage, that, once 
a man has begun to practise it, the habit holds him with 
stronger and stronger grip, so that he must be brave 
whether he will or no. I think a fireman, for instance, 
who for years had jumped at the tap of a bell into any 
peril, would show the same fine courage all alone, let 
us say, in some crisis on a desert island. He could n't 
turn coward if he tried. 

It is good to know, too, that these fearless qualities 
may be transmitted from father to son, so that we have 
whole families born, as it were, to be brave, and we see 
the son of a pilot facing the seasick torture for twenty- 
odd years, as his father faced it before him for thirty. 
Nor is it possible to be in close relations with a very 
brave man without yielding in some measure to his 
personality; heroes produce heroes through a sort of 
neighborhood influence, just as surely as thieves pro- 
duce their kind. Thus the brother-in-law of a lion- 
tamer, though previously a mild enough man, takes to 
taming lions, and does it well. And wives of acro- 
bats find themselves one day quietly facing perils of 
the air that would surely have blanched their cheeks 
had they married, let us say, photographers. 

348 



THE DYNAMITE WORKER 349 

All of which brings me to a remarkable family of 
explosive makers — the Duponts of Wilmington, who 
for generations now have had practical monopoly in 
this country of the powder-making business, including 
dynamite and nitroglycerin. In this enterprise a great 
fortune has accumulated, so that the Duponts of to-day 
are very rich men, far beyond any need of working in 
the mills themselves, and have been for years. Yet, 
work in the mills they do, all of them, practically, and 
direct in detail every process of manufacture, and face 
continually in their own persons the same terrible dan- 
gers that the humblest mixer faces. There has grown 
in their hearts through the century, along with riches, 
a great pride of courage, like that of the officer who 
leads his men into battle — a pride far stronger than 
any longing for idleness or pleasure. And they can- 
not, if they would, leave these slow-grinding mills, 
where any day a spark may bring catastrophe to make 
the whole land shudder, as it has shuddered many times 
after the fury of these giant magazines. 

There came a day, for instance — this was a long time 
ago — when a swift flame swept through one of the 
mixing-rooms, nearly empty of powder at the time, 
yet so permeated with the stuff in floor and walls that 
instantly the building was burning fiercely. No man 
can say what started it. The cause of trouble at 
a powder-mill is seldom known; it comes too quickly, 
and usually leaves no witness. A nail overlooked in 
a workman's heel may have done the harm by striking 
a stone, though of course there is an imperative rule 
that all footgear made with nails be left outside the 
walls ; or a heavy box slid along the wooden floor may 
have brought a flash out of the dry timbers. At any 
rate, the flash came, and the blaze followed on it so 
swiftly that the building was wrapped in fire before men 



350 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

inside could reach the door, and they presently burst 
out blazing themselves, for their clothing, as it must be, 
was sifted through with explosive dust. Indeed, it is al- 
ways true in fires at powder-mills that the workmen 
themselves are a serious menace to the buildings by rea- 
son of their own inflammability. 

So the next thing was a plunge into the placid Bran- 
dywine, which winds across the yards between willow- 
hung banks. In went the men, in went young Alexis 
Dupont, and with a little hiss their flaming garments 
were extinguished. Then, as they struck out into the 
stream, they looked back and saw that the wind was 
carrying a shower of sparks from the burning building 
to the roof of a cutting-mill near by, where tons of 
powder lay. For one of the sparks to reach the tiniest 
powder train would mean the blowing up of this mill, 
and almost certainly the blowing up of another and an- 
other by the concussion, for it is in vain that they try 
to protect powder-mills by scattering them over wide 
yards in many little buildings. When one explodes, 
the great shock usually sets off others, as a falling 
rock turns loose an avalanche. 

All this young Dupont realized in a single glance. 
There would be an awful disaster presently, with many 
lives imperiled, unless those falling firebrands could 
somehow be kept off that roof. To know this was to 
act. Millionaire or not, peril or not, it was his plain 
duty as a Dupont to fight those sparks, and, without a 
moment's wavering, he turned back and scrambled up 
the bank. 

"Come on, boys!" he cried; "start the bucket line," 
and a moment later he was climbing to the roof of 
the threatened mill, where he did all that a brave 
man can do — stamped out the falling embers, dashed 
water again and again upon the kindling fire as the 




YOUNG Dl'PONT WORKING TO SAVE THE POWDER-MILL. 



352 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

men passed up full buckets, and for a time seemed 
to conquer. But presently the fire flamed hotter, the 
sparks came faster, and the water came not fast enough. 
He saw — he must have seen — that the struggle was 
hopeless, that the mill beneath him was doomed, that 
the explosion must come soon. From the ground they 
shouted, calling on him to save himself. He shouted 
back an order that they pass up more water, and keep 
passing water. There was only one thing in the world 
he wanted — water. 

The men below did their best, but it was a vain ef- 
fort, for in those days the roofs of powder-mills were 
made of pitch and cement — not of iron, as to-day — 
and by this time the fire had eaten its way nearly 
through. Alexis Dupont, working desperately, stood 
there with flames spreading all around him. It was 
plain to every one that the minutes of his life were 
numbered. Again they shouted — and — 

The explosion came like an execution, and out of 
the wreck of it they bore away his crushed and broken 
body. The last thing he knew was that he had played 
the game out fairly to the end — he died like a Dupont, 
said the men. 

Such was the spirit of the second generation (Alexis 
Dupont was a son of old Eleuthere, founder of the 
line), and later, we find the same courage in the third 
generation, as on March 29, 1884, when La Motte 
Dupont, one of the grandchildren, took his stand inside 
the dynamite-mill — his mill — when it was threatened 
by fire, and stayed there after every man had left it, 
struggling with hand and brain against the danger 
until the explosion, coming like a thousand cannon, 
crashed his body deep into a sand-heap and left it with 
the life gone out. 

I suppose this is only an instance of nature's ten- 



THE DYNAMITE WORKER 353 

dency to furnish always what is needed, to raise up a 
hero for each emergency ; but it is encouraging to know 
that the very finest kind of courage may be thus devel- 
oped by the mere pressure of moral responsibility in a 
man under no master, but free to be a craven if he 
will. We have seen something like this in the splen- 
did devotion of fire-department chiefs, who often out- 
shine all their men simply because they cannot resist 
the gallant spirit in their own hearts. 

Now for the exception to this rule of persisting 
courage, an exception sometimes presented in the lives 
of explosive makers (and in the other lives, too), and 
showing that in certain cases courage may suddenly 
and strangely disappear. A man may be brave for 
years, and then cease to be brave. The wild-beast 
tamer may awaken some morning and discover himself 
afraid of his lions. The steeple-climber who has never 
flinched at any height may shrink at last. The pilot 
in the rapids, the acrobat on his swing, the diver sink- 
ing to a wreck, may feel a quaking of heart unknown 
before. Here is apparent contradiction, for how can 
courage be made by habit and then unmade? I don't 
know. I merely give the facts as I have found them, 
and it is quite certain that a sturdy Irishman who has 
shoveled powder all his life and waded in it knee-deep, 
as if it were so much coal-dust, may, for no reason he 
can put finger on, find himself lying awake of nights 
reflecting on what would happen if a spark should 
strike under one of the big rollers he feeds so carelessly, 
or, remembering uneasily that dream of his wife's 
about a white horse — every powder-man knows the 
close relation between dreams and explosions, and — 
well, they will all tell you this, that the only thing for 
a man to do when his heart feels the cold touch of fear 
is to quit his job. If he does n't his knell is sounded, he 

23 



354 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 



is marked for sacrifice, his tigers will rend him, the dee 
waters will overwhelm him, a swift fall will crush 
him — he will surely die. 

The greatest catastrophe in the records of powdei 
making came because a man ignored such plain warn- 
ing of his own fear. At least, the workmen at the 

Dupont mills will 
tell you this if you 
can get them to 
break through their 
usual reserve. The 
man was William 
Green, and, what- 
ever his fault, he 
paid the fullest 
price for it. Green 
was stationed in 
one of the maga- 
zines, with the re- 
sponsibility of seal- 
ing up hexagonal 
powder, a very 
powerful kind used 
by the government 




EFFECTS OF DYNAMITE EXPLODED UNDER WATER. 



in 



heavy 



sruns. 



This powder comes 
pressed into little six-sided cakes of reddish color, 
which are packed in large wooden boxes lined with tin, 
and it was Green's duty to solder the tin covers tight 
with a hot iron. In each box there was enough of this 
powder to blow up a fortress, and it is no wonder the 
occupation finally told on Green's nerves. He said to 
his wife that sooner or later a speck of grit would touch 
his iron and make a spark, and then — The theory is 
that a spark is required to explode powder which will 



THE DYNAMITE WORKER 355 

only burn harmlessly at the touch of a hot iron or a 
flame. 

However this may be (and I should add that the 
theory is disputed), Green felt that he was in danger, 
and by that fact, say the powder-men, if for no other 
reason, he was in danger. And one day — it was Octo- 
ber 7, 1890 — the spark came; surely that was a most 
important spark, for it caused the explosion of one 
hundred and fifty tons of gunpowder, the instant death 
of thirteen men and one woman, and the serious or 
fatal injury of twenty-two men and nine women. 

Only an earthquake could have wrought such terrible 
destruction. The city of Wilmington was shaken to its 
foundations. Great chasms were rent in the solid rock 
under the exploding magazines. Trees were torn up by 
the roots. Iron castings, weighing tons, were hurled 
clean across the Brandywine. Iron columns thick as a 
man's waist were twisted and bent like copper wire. 
Horses outside the yards were found with legs missing ; 
men were found stripped clean of their clothes, and this 
curious fact was developed, that a man or a horse in 
the region of explosion would have shoes blown from 
the feet (iron shoes or leather shoes) if the legs were 
on the ground at the moment of shock, but would keep 
shoes on if the legs were lifted. Thus poor Green was 
found with both feet shod, and so identified, although 
his body had no other stitch of covering, and the ex- 
planation was that he probably saw the spark in time 
to spring away, and was actually in the air when the 
explosion came. 

In my investigations I have heard various stories 
showing what uncertainty there is as to the behavior 
of dynamite in the presence of fire. Workmen who 
handle it constantly in blasting operations say you 
can put fire to a stick of dynamite without danger, 



356 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

and it will simply burn away in bluish flame. On the 
other hand, they admit that in every fifty or a hundred 
sticks there may be one where the touch of fire will 
bring explosion. 

It is quite certain this was the case in New York's 




THE EXPLOSION IN THE NEW YORK CITY TUNNEL. 



recent tunnel accident near One Hundred and Eightieth 
Street, and I have some facts of interest here obtained 
from a workman who was in the main gallery at the 
time. This man heard a shout of warning, and, look- 
ing down the rock street, saw a puddle of blazing oil 
from one of the lamps lapping at the side of a heavy 
wooden box. He knew that the box was full of dyna- 
mite, and as he looked he saw the yellow oil flame turn 



THE DYNAMITE WORKER 357 

to blue. That was enough for him, and he started to 
run for his life. But the explosion caught him in the 
first step, lifted him from the ground, and bore him on, 
while his legs kept up the motions of running. He was 
running on the air. 

As he was thus hurled along his knee struck a large 
stone between the siding and the north heading, and 
he fell on his face, half dazed. The air was thick with 
strangling fumes, there was a frightful din ' about 
him — yells and crashing stones. Every lamp had been 
blown out, and in the utter darkness he could see the 
glaring eyeballs of fleeing negroes, who cursed -in 
awful oaths as they ran. He pressed his mouth close 
to the ground, and found he could breathe better. He 
felt some one step over him, and seized a leg. The leg 
kicked itself free and went on. He groped about with 
his hands, and touched an iron rail; it was the little 
track for hauling the dumping-cars. He crept along 
this painfully to the siding, then down the siding to the 
shaft, where, in the blackness, he found a frantic com- 
pany — negroes mad with fright, Italians screaming and 
praying, Irishmen keeping fairly cool, but wondering 
why, oh, why! the elevator did not come, and several 
men stretched on the ground quite still or groaning 
quietly. 

Time lacks for the rest of the story ; they took out 
men dressed in a collar and shirt-band only — every- 
thing else blown off, and some whose faces were mot- 
tled with fragments of stone, a kind of dynamite tat- 
tooing, and some grievously injured. There are no 
limits to the fury of dynamite, once it sets out to be 
cruel. 



II 



WE VISIT A DYNAMITE-FACTORY AND MEET A 

MAN WHO THINKS COURAGE IS 

AN ACCIDENT 

ON a certain pleasant morning in June, I set forth 
to visit a dynamite-factory, and see with my own 
eyes, if might be, some of the men who follow this 
strange and hazardous business. As the train rushed 
along I thought of the power for good and evil that 
is in this wonderful agent : dynamite piercing moun- 
tains; dynamite threatening armies and blowing up 
great ships; a teacupful of dynamite shattering a for- 
tress, a teaspoonful of the essence of dynamite — that is, 
nitroglycerin — tearing a man to atoms. What kind 
of fellows must they be who spend their lives making 
dynamite ! 

In due course I found myself back in the hill land 
of northern New Jersey, where everything is green and 
quiet, a lovely summer's retreat with nothing in ex- 
ternal signs to suggest an industry of violence. Stop ; 
here is a sign, though it does n't seem much : two sleepy 
wagons lumbering along the road between these cool 
woods and the waving fields. Farm produce? Lum- 
ber? No. The first is loaded with a sort of yellow 
meal, and trails the way with yellow sprinklings. That 
is sulphur. They use it at the works. The second is 
piled up with crates, out of which come thick glass 
necks like the heads of imprisoned turkeys. These 
are carboys of nitric acid, hundreds of gallons of that 

358 



THE DYNAMITE WORKER 359 

terrible stuff which is so truly liquid fire that a single 
drop of it on a piece of board will set the wood in 
flames. This nitric acid mixed with innocent sweet 
glycerin (it conies along the road in barrels) makes 
nitroglycerin, and the proper mixing of these two is 
the chief business of a dynamite-factory. 

Farther down the road I came to a railroad track 
where a long freight-train was standing on a siding. 
Some men were busy here loading a car with clean- 
looking wooden boxes that might have held starch or 
soap, but did hold dynamite neatly packed in long, fat 
sticks like huge fire-crackers. Each box bore this in- 
scription in red letters : high explosives, danger- 
ous. I looked along the train and saw that there were 
several cars closed and sealed, with a sign nailed on the 
outside : powder, handle carefully. 

In this case "powder" means dynamite, for the prod- 
uct of a dynamite-factory is always called powder. I 
think the men feel more comfortable when they use 
that milder name. There was "powder" enough on 
this train to wreck a city, but nobody seemed to mind. 
The horses switched their tails. The men laughed and 
loitered. They might have been laying bricks, for an)^ 
interest they showed. 

I asked one of them if it is considered safe to haul 
car-loads of dynamite about the country. He said that 
some people consider it safe, and some do not; some 
railroads will carry dynamite, while others refuse it. 

"Suppose a man were to shoot a rifle-ball into one 
of these cars," I asked, "do you think it would ex- 
plode?" 

This led to an argument. One of the group was 
positive it would explode. Concussion, he declared, 
is the thing that sets off dynamite. Another knew 
of experiments at the works where they had fired rifle- 



360 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

balls into quantities of dynamite, and found that some- 
times it exploded and sometimes it did n't. 

Then a third man spoke up with an air of authority. 
"You 've got to have a red spark," said he, "to set off 
dynamite. I 've handled it long enough to know. 
Here 's an experiment that 's been tried : They took 
an old flat-car and loaded it with rocks ; then they fas- 
tened a box of dynamite to the bumper, and let the car 
run down a steep grade, bang! into another car an- 
chored at the bottom. And they found that the dyna- 
mite never exploded unless the bumpers were faced 
with iron. It did n't matter how much concussion they 
got with wooden bumpers, the dynamite was like that 
much putty; but as soon as a red spark jumped into it 
out of the iron, why, off she 'd go." 

Then he instanced various cases where powder-cars 
had gone through railroad wrecks without exploding, 
although boxes of dynamite had been smashed open 
and scattered about. 

"How about that car of ours the other day up in 
central New York?" said the first man. "Everything 
blown to pieces, and six lads killed." 

He smiled grimly, but the other persisted : "That col- 
lision only proves what I say. There was a red-hot 
locomotive plowing through a car of dynamite, and 
of course she went up. But it was n't the concussion 
did it; it was the sparks." 

"You say that it takes a red spark," I observed, "to 
set off dynamite. Do you mean that a white spark 
would n't do it?" 

"That 's what I mean," said he. "It seems queer, 
but it 's a fact. Put a white-hot poker into a box of 
dynamite, and it will only burn ; but let the poker cool 
down until it 's only red-hot and the dynamite will ex- 
plode." 




"everything was blown to pieces." 



362 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

Pondering this remarkable statement, I continued on 
my way, and presently, not seeing any big building, 
asked a farmer where the Atlantic Dynamite Works 
were. He swept the horizon with his arm, and said 
they were all about us ; they covered hundreds of acres 
— little, low buildings placed far apart, so that if one 
exploded it would n't set off the rest. 

"The dynamite-magazines are along the hillside 
yonder," he said. "If they went up, I guess there 
would n't be much left of the town." 

"What town?" said I. 

"Why, Kenvil. That 's where the dynamite-mixers 
live. It 's over there. Quickest way is across this 
field and over the fence." 

I followed his advice, and presently passed near a 
number of small brick buildings so very innocent-look- 
ing that I found myself saying, "What ! this blow up, 
or that little sputtering shanty wreck a town?" It 
seemed ridiculous. I learned afterward that I had 
Avalked through the most dangerous part of the works ; 
it is n't size here that counts. 

I paused at several open doors, and got a whiff of 
chemicals that made me understand the dynamite-sick- 
ness of which I had heard. No marl can breathe the 
strangling fumes of nitric acid and nitrated glycerin 
without discomfort, and every man here must breathe 
them. They rise from vats and troughs like brownish- 
yellow smoke; they are in the mixing-rooms, in the 
packing-rooms, in the freezing-house, in. the separating- 
house, everywhere; and they take men in the throat, 
and make their hearts pound strangely, and set their 
heads splitting with pain. Not a workman escapes the 
dynamite-headache; new hands are wretched with it 
for a fortnight, and even the well-seasoned men get a 
touch of it on Monday mornings after the Sunday rest. 



THE DYNAMITE WORKER 363 

In walking about the works I noticed that the sev- 
eral buildings, representing different steps in the manu- 
facture of explosives, are united by long troughs or 
pipes sufficiently inclined to allow the nitroglycerin to 
flow by its own weight from one building to another, 
so that you watch the first operations in dynamite- 
making at the top of a slope, and the last ones at the 
bottom. Of course this transportation by flow is pos- 
sible for nitroglycerin only while it is a liquid, and not 
after it has been absorbed by porous earth and given the 
name of dynamite and the look of moist sawdust. As 
dynamite it is transported between buildings on little 
railroads, with horses to haul the cars. 

I noted also that most of the buildings are built 
against a hillside or surrounded by heavy mounds of 
earth, so that if one of them blows up, the others may 
be protected against the flight of debris. Without 
such barricade the shattered walls and rocks would be 
hurled in all directions with the energy of cannon- 
balls, and a single explosion would probably mean the 
destruction of the entire works. 

At one place I saw a triangular frame of timbers 
and iron supporting a five-hundred-pound swinging 
mortar, that hung down like a great gipsy kettle under 
its tripod. In front of this mortar was a sand-heap, 
and here, I learned, were made 'the tests of dynamite, 
a certain quantity of this lot or that being exploded 
against the sand-heap, and the mortar's swing back 
from the recoil giving a measure of its force. The 
more nitroglycerin there is in a given lot of dynamite, 
the farther back the mortar will swing. It should be 
understood that there are many different grades of 
dynamite, the strength of these depending upon how 
much nitroglycerin has been absorbed by a certain kind 
of porous earth. 



364 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

In a little white house beyond the laboratory I found 
the superintendent of the works, a man of few words, 
accustomed to give brief orders and have them obeyed. 
He did not care to talk about dynamite — they never 
do. He did not think there was much to say, anyhow, 
except that people have silly notions about the danger. 
He had been working with dynamite now for twenty- 
five years, and never had an accident — that is, himself. 
Oh, yes ; some men had been killed in his time, but not 
so many as in other occupations — not nearly so many 
as in railroading. Of course there was danger in 
dealing with any great force ; the thing would run away 
with you now and then : but on the whole he regarded 
dynamite as a very well behaved commodity, and much 
slandered. 

"Then you think dynamite- workers have no great 
need of courage?" I suggested. 

"No more than others. Why should they? They 
work along for years, and nothing happens. They 
might as well be shoveling coal. And if anything does 
happen, it 's over so quick that courage is n't much 
use." 

Having said this 5> he hesitated a moment, and then, 
as if in a spirit of fairness, told of a certain man at 
the head of a nitroglycerin-mill who on one occasion 
did do a little thing that some people called brave. 
He would n't give the name of this "certain man," 
but I fancied I could guess it. 

This nitroglycerin-mill, it seems, was on the Pacific 
coast, whence they used to ship the dynamite on ves- 
sels that loaded right alongside the yards. One day 
a mixing-house exploded, and hurled burning timbers 
over a vessel lying near that had just received a fresh 
cargo. Her decks were piled with boxes of explosives 
— wooden boxes, which at once took fire. When this 




"he went to work throwing water on the burning boxes. 



366 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

"certain man" rushed down to the dock, the situation 
was as bad as could be. There were tons of dynamite 
ready to explode, and a hot fire was eating deeper into 
the wood with every second. And all the workmen had 
run for their lives ! 

"Well," said the superintendent, "what this man did 
was to grab a bucket and line, and jump on the deck. 
Yes, it was burning; everything was burning. But 
he went to work lowering the bucket overside and 
throwing water on the flaming boxes. After a while 
he put 'em out, and the dynamite did n't explode at all ; 
but it would have exploded in a mighty short time if 
he had kept away, for the wood was about burned 
through in several places. I know that 's a true story, 
because, well — because I know it." 

"Don't you call that man brave?" I asked. 

The superintendent shook his head. "He was brave 
in that particular instance, but he might not have been 
brave at another time. You never can tell what a 
man will do in danger. It depends on how he feels or 
on how a thing happens to strike him. A man might 
act like a hero one day and like a coward another day, 
with exactly the same danger in both cases. There 's 
a lot of chance in it. If that man I 'm telling you 
about had been up late the night before, or had eaten a 
tough piece of steak for breakfast, the chances are he 
would have run like the rest." 



Ill 



HOW JOSHUA PLUMSTEAD STUCK TO HIS NITRO- 

GLYCERIN-VAT IN AN EXPLOSION AND 

SAVED THE WORKS 

I DROVE over from the works to Kenvil under the 
escort of a red-nosed man who discoursed on local 
matters, particularly on the prospects of his youngest 
son, who was eighteen years old and earned three dol- 
lars a day. 

"What does he do?" I asked. 

"He 's a packer," said the red-nosed man. 

"What does he pack?" 

"Dynamite. Guess there ain't no other stuff he c'd 
pack an' get them wages. Jest the same, I wish he 'd 
quit, specially sence the big blow-up t' other day." 

"Why, what blew up?" I inquired. 

"Freezing-house did with an all-fired big lot of nitro- 
glycerin. Nobody knows what set her off. Reg'lar 
miracle there wa'n't a lot killed. Man in charge, 
feller named Ball, he went out to look at a water-pipe. 
Had n't been out the door a minute when off she went. 
Say, you 'd oughter seen the boys run ! They tell me 
some of 'em jumped clean through the winders, sashes 
an' all. If ye want to know more about it, there 's my 
boy now ; he was right near the house when it hap- 
pened." 

We drew up at the Kenvil hotel, where a young 
man was sitting. Here was the modern dynamite- 
worker, and not at all as I had pictured him. He 

367 



368 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

looked like a summer boarder who liked to take things 
easy and wear good clothes. Wondering much, I sat 
down and talked to this young man, a skilful dynamite- 
packer, it appears, who happened at the time to be 
taking a day off. 

"They put me at machine-packing a few days ago," 
he said, "and it 's made my wrist lame. Going to rest 
until Monday." 

After some preliminaries I asked him about the pro- 
cess of packing dynamite, and he explained how the 
freshly mixed explosive is delivered at the various 
packing-houses in little tubs, a hundred pounds to a 
tub, and how they dig into it with shovels, and mold 
it into shape on the benches like so much butter, and 
ram it into funnels, and finally, with the busy tamping 
of rubber-shod sticks, squeeze it down into the paper 
shells that form the cartridges. One would say they 
play with concentrated death as children play with saw- 
dust dolls, but he declared it safe enough. 

"How large are the cartridges ?" I asked. 

"Oh, different sizes. The smallest are about eight 
inches long, and the largest thirty. And they vary 
from one inch thick up to two and a half. I know a 
man who carried a thirty-inch cartridge all the way to 
Morristown in an ordinary passenger-car. He had it 
wrapped in a newspaper, under his arm like a big loaf 
of bread. But say, he took chances, all right." 

At this another man informed us that people often 
carry nitroglycerin about with them, and take no risk, 
by simply pouring it into a big bottle of alcohol. Then 
it can do no harm ; and when they want to use the ex- 
plosive, they have only to evaporate the alcohol. 

The talk turned to precautions taken against acci- 
dents. In all powder-mills the workmen are required 
to change their clothes before entering the buildings, 



THE DYNAMITE WORKER 369 

and to put on rubber-soled shoes. There must be no 
bit of metal about a man's person, no iron nail or 
buckle, nothing that could strike fire; and of course 
the workman who would bring a match on the premises 
would be counted Avorse than an assassin. 

"Just the same, though, matches get into the works 
once in a while," remarked the young packer. "I 
found a piece of a match one day in a tub of dynamite ; 
it had the head on, too. Say, it 's bad enough to find 
buttons and pebbles, but when I saw that match-head — 
well, it made me weak in the knees." 

This brought back the old question, When does dy- 
namite explode, and when does it not explode ? I men- 
tioned the red-spark theory. 

"I think that 's correct," agreed the packer. "I Ve 
watched 'em burn old dynamite-boxes, and if there are 
iron nails in the boxes they explode as soon as the nails 
get red-hot; if there are no nails, they don't explode." 

"You mean empty boxes?" I asked. 

"Certainly; but there 's nitroglycerin in the wood, 
lots of it. It oozes out of the dynamite, especially on 
a hot day, and soaks into everything. Why, I suppose 
there 's enough nitroglycerin in the overalls I wear to 
blow a man into — well, I would n't want to lay 'em on 
an anvil and give 'em a whack with a sledge." 

There was a certain novelty to me in the thought of 
a pair of old overalls exploding; but I was soon to hear 
of stranger things. By this time other workmen had 
drawn up chairs, and were ready now with modest con- 
tributions from their own experience. 

"Tell ye a queer thing," said one man. "In that 
explosion the other day, — I mean the freezing-house, — 
a car loaded with powder [dynamite] had just passed, 
not a minute before the explosion. Lucky for the three 
men with the car, was n't it? But what gets me is 

24 



370 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

how the blast, when it came, blew the harness off the 
horse. Yes, sir; that 's what it did — clean off; and 
away he went galloping after the men as hard as he 
could leg it. Nobody touched a buckle or a strap. It 
was dynamite unhitched that animal." 

"Dynamite did another trick that day," put in a tall 
man. "It caught a bird on the wing. Dunno whether 
't was a robin or a swaller, but 't was a bird, all right. 
Caught it in a sheet of tin blowed off the roof, an' jest 
twisted that little bird all up as it sailed along, and 
when it struck the ground, there was the bird fast in 
a cage made in the air out of a tin roof. Alive ? Yes, 
sir, alive; and that shows how fast dynamite does 
business." 

So the talk ran on, with many little details of ex- 
plosions. The expert explained that the air waves of a 
great concussion move along with crests and troughs 
like water waves, and the shattering effect comes only 
at the crests, so that all the windows might be broken 
in a house, say, half a mile from an explosion, and no 
windows be broken in a house two hundred yards 
nearer. The first house would have been smitten by a 
destructive wave crest, the second passed over by a 
harmless wave trough. And, by the way, when win- 
dows are broken by these blasts of concussion, it ap- 
pears that they are usually broken outzvard, not in- 
ward, and that the fragments are found on the ground 
outside the house, not on the floors inside. The reason 
of this is that the concussion waves leave behind them 
a partial vacuum, and windows are broken by the air 
inside houses rushing out. 

"How about thunder-storms?" I asked. 

"There is always danger," said the expert, "and all 
hands hurry out of the works as soon as the lightning 
begins to play. If a bolt struck a lot of dynamite it 
would set it off." 



THE DYNAMITE WORKER 371 

Then he explained that the policy of dynamite manu- 
facturers is to handle explosives in small quantities, 
say a ton at a time, each lot being finished and hauled 
away in wagons before another lot is started. This is 
possible because of the short time occupied in making 
dynamite. He assured me, for instance, that if there 
were only raw materials at the works on a certain 
morning when the seven-o'clock whistle blew, it would 
be perfectly possible to have a ton of dynamite-car- 
tridges finished, packed in boxes, and loaded on freight- 
cars by nine o'clock. 

After this some one told of a thrilling happening in 
the mixing-house, by the great vat, wherein nitro- 
glycerin is mixed with porous earth, called dope, and 
becomes dynamite. Over this vat four men work con- 
tinually, two with rakes, two with hoes, kneading half 
a ton or more of explosive dough to the proper con- 
sistency. 

One day a powder-car loaded with heavy stone got 
loose on its track a quarter of a mile up the slope, and 
started down the steep grade. The tracks ran straight 
into the mixing-house. The switch w T as open, and the 
first thing these men knew, there was an angry clang 
at the switch, and then a swift, heavy car was plunging 
toward the open door, with every chance that it would 
set off twelve hundred pounds of dynamite there. 
Workmen outside shouted, and then stared in horror. 
Not a man in the mixing-house moved. All four kept 
their places around the vat, held tight to their rakes 
and hoes, while the car, just missing the dynamite, 
hurled its mass of two tons through the back wall of 
the building, and spent its force against a tree-trunk. 
There was no explosion, and nothing happened, which 
was something of a miracle; but what impressed me 
was that these four men stood still, not from courage, 
but because they were frozen with fear! 




'A SWIFT, HEAVY CAR WAS PLUNGING TOWARD THE OPEN DOOR. 



THE DYNAMITE WORKER 373 

While there is danger in every step of dynamite 
manufacture, it appears that the center of peril is in 
the nitrating-house, where the fresh glycerin is mixed 
with nitric acid, or, more correctly, is nitrated by it. 
This operation takes place in a great covered vat about 
which are many pipes and stop-cocks. A man stands 
here like an engineer at the throttle, watching his ther- 
mometer and letting in fresh glycerin. These are his 
two duties, and upon the right performance of them 
depends the safety of the works. Every hour he must 
let in some seven hundred pounds of glycerin upon the 
deadly acid, and every hour he must draw off some 
fifteen hundred pounds of nitroglycerin and let it go 
splashing away in a yellowish stream down the long, 
uncovered trough that leads to the separating-house 
yonder. From this separating-house runs another 
trough to the freezing-house, and a third to the distant 
mixing-house. These three troughs inclose an oblong 
space, at the corners of which stand the nitrating- 
house, the separating-house, and the freezing-house. 
In each one of these, at any hour of the day, is 
a wagon-load of pure nitroglycerin, while in the 
three troughs are little rivers of nitroglycerin always 
flowing. 

The arrangement of buildings in this part of the 
works makes clearer what was done at the nitrating- 
house by a certain Joshua Plumstead in the recent ex- 
plosion. Joshua is a veteran at dynamite-making. He 
has worked at the nitrating-vat for twenty-five years, 
and has probably made more nitroglycerin than any 
one man in the world. He has been through all the 
great explosions ; he has seen many men killed ; he has 
stood by time and again when his own nitrating-vat 
has taken fire ; and yet he always comes through safely. 
They say there is no man like Joshua for nerve and 



374 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

judgment when the demons of gas and fire begin to 
play. _ 

This explosion took place at the freezing-house, 
which is the one place in all the works where dynamite 
is never expected to explode. Yet it did explode now, 
with a smashing of air and a horrible grinding under- 
foot that stifled all things in men but a mad desire to 
flee. 

Joshua Plumstead was in the nitrating-house alone. 
His helper had fled. The roof timbers were crashing 
down about him. He heard the hiss of fire and the 
shouts of workmen running. He knew that a second 
explosion might come at any . moment. There was 
clanger from fire-brands and flying masses of stone and 
iron, danger from the open troughs, danger from the 
near-by houses. A shock, a spark anywhere here 
might mean the end. 

Plumstead kept his eyes on the long thermometer 
that reached up from the furious smoking mass of oil 
and acid. The mercury had crept up from eighty-five 
to ninety, and was rising still. At ninety-five he knew 
the nitroglycerin would take fire, probably explode, and 
nothing could save it. The vat was seething with a full 
charge. Ninety-one ! He shut off the inflow of glycerin. 
Ninety-two ! Something might be wrong with the coils 
of ice-cold water that chill the vat down to safety. He 
opened the cocks full. Crash ! came a beam from over- 
head, and narrowly missed the gearing of the agitating- 
blades. Were they to stop but for a single second, the 
nitroglycerin would explode. He eased the bearings, 
turned on compressed air, watched the thermometer — 
and waited. 

There was no other man but Plumstead who did 
wait that day; there was none but he whose waiting 
could avail anything. He had to fight it out alone 




"he knew that a second explosion might come at any moment." 



3/6 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

with that ton of nitroglycerin, or run and let an explo- 
sion come far worse than the other. He fought it out ; 
he waited, and he won. Gradually the thermometer 
dropped to eighty-five, to eighty, and the danger was 
passed. 

But — well, even the superintendent admitted that 
Joshua did a rather fine thing here, while the work- 
men themselves and the people of Kenvil shake their 
heads solemnly and vow that he saved the works. 



THE LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEER 

i 

HOW IT FEELS TO RIDE AT NIGHT ON A LOCO- 
MOTIVE GOING NINETY MILES AN HOUR 

IT is 8.30 p.m., any night you please, and for miles 
through the yards of East Chicago lights are swing- 
ing, semaphore arms are moving, men in clicking 
signal-towers are juggling with electric buttons and 
pneumatic levers, target lights on a hundred switches 
are changing from red to green, from green to red; 
everything is clear, everything is all right, the Lake 
Shore Mail is coming, with eighty tons of letters and 
papers in its pouches. Relays of engines and engineers 
have brought these messages, this news of the world, 
thus far on their journey. Up the Hudson they have 
come, and across the Empire State and along the 
shores of Lake Michigan, nearly a thousand miles in 
twenty-four hours, which is not so bad, although the 
hottest, maddest rush is yet to come. 

It is a fine thing to know the men who drive the 
engines on these trains ; just to see them is something, 
and to make them talk (if you can do it) is better busi- 
ness than interviewing most celebrities you have heard 
about. 

To this end I set out, one evening early in January, 
for the great round-house of the Northwestern road, 
that lies on the outskirts of Chicago. A strange place, 
surely, is this to one who approaches it unprepared — 

377 



378 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

a place where yellow eyes glare out of deep shadows, 
where fire-dragons rush at you with crunchings and 
snortings, where the air hisses and roars. It might be 
some demon menagerie, there in the darkness. 

To this place of fears and pitfalls I came an hour 
or so before starting-time, and here I found Dan 
White, one of the Northwestern crack-a- jacks, giving 
the last careful touches to locomotive 908 before the 
night's hard run. In almost our first words my heart 
was won by something White said. I had mentioned 
Frank Bullard of the Burlington road, a rival by all 
rights, and immediately this bluff, broad-shouldered 
man exclaimed : "Ah, he 's a fine fellow, Bullard is, 
and he knows how to run an engine." White would 
fight Bullard at the throttle to any finish, but would 
speak only good words of him. 

"Tell me," said I, "about the great run you made 
the other night." From a dozen lips I had heard of 
White's tremendous dash from Chicago to Clinton, 
Iowa. 

"Oh, it was n't much; we had to make the time up, 
and we did it. Did n't we, Fred?" 

This to the fireman, who nodded in assent, but said 
nothing. 

"You made a record, did n't you?" 

"Well, we went one hundred and thirty-eight miles 
in one hundred and forty-three minutes ; that included 
three stops and two slow-downs. I don't know as 
anybody has beat that — much." 

By dint of questioning, I drew from this modest man 
some details of his achievement. The curve-bent 
stretch of seventeen miles between Franklin Grove 
and Nelson they did in fourteen minutes, and a part of 
this, beyond Nachusa, they took at an eighty-mile pace. 
They covered five miles between Clarence and Stan- 




A PLACE WHERE YELLOW EYES GLARE OUT OF DEEP SHADOWS. 



380 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

wood in three minutes and a half, and they made two 
miles beyond Dennison at over a hundred miles an 
hour. As the mail rushed west, word was flashed 
ahead, and crowds gathered at the stations to cheer 
and marvel. 

"There must have been five hundred people on the 
platform at Dixon," said White, telling the story, "and 
they looked to me like a swarm of ants, just a black, 
wriggling mass, and then they were gone. We came 
on to a bridge there after a big reverse curve with a 
down grade, and I guess no one will ever know how 
fast we were going, as we slammed her around one 
way and then slammed her around the other way. It 
was every bit of ninety miles an hour. You got all 
you. wanted, did n't you, Fred ?" 

The fireman looked up, torch in hand, and remarked, 
in a dry monotone: "Goin' through Dixon I said my 
prayers and hung on, stretched out flat. That 's what 
I done." 

"Fred and I," continued White, "both got letters 
about the run from the superintendent. Here 's mine, 
if you 'd like to read it." 

The pleasure of these two blackened men over this 
graciousness of the superintendent was a thing to see. 
For such a bit of paper, crumpled and smeared with 
oil, I believe they would have taken the Mississippi at 
a jump, engine, train, and all. Superintendent's or- 
ders, superintendent's praise— there is the beginning 
and end of all things for them. 

My first long ride on one of these splendid locomo- 
tives was with the Burlington night mail (no passen- 
gers), 590 pulling her and Frank Bullard at the throt- 
tle. It is said that the Baldwin Locomotive Works 
never turned out a faster engine than this 590. The 
man must be a giant whose head will top her drivers, 



THE LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEER 381 

and, for all her seventy tons, there is speed in every 
line of her. She is a young engine, too — only four 
years old — and Bullard swears he will back her in the 
matter of getting over rails to do anything that steel 
and steam can do. "She 's willing and gentle, sir, and 
easy running. You '11 see in a minute." 

These words from Bullard, first-class engine-driver 
of the C. B. & O., a long, loosely jointed man, with 
the eye and build of a scout. As he spoke they 
were coupling us to the mail-cars, in preparation for 
the start. In overalls and sweater I had come, with 
type-written authority to make the run that night. This 
was in the first week in January, the second time Bul- 
lard had drawn the throttle for Burlington on the new 
fast schedule. Burlington lay off there in Iowa, on 
the Mississippi, with all the night and all the State of 
Illinois between us. 

Now the train stands ready — three mail-cars and the 
engine, not a stick besides. No Pullman comforts 
here, no bunks for sleeping, no man aboard who has 
the right to sleep. Everything is hustle and business. 
Already the mail clerks are swarming at the pouches, 
like printers on a rush edition. See those last bags 
swung in through the panel doors ! Not even the 
president of the road may ride here without a permit 
from the government. 

Bullard takes up a red, smoking torch and looks 
590 over. He fills her cups, and prods a two-foot oiler 
into her rods and bearings. Dan Geary, the fireman, 
looks out of his window on the left and chews com- 
placently. Down the track beside him locomotive 1309 
backs up, a first-class engine she, but 590 bulks over 
her as the king of a herd might over some good, ordi- 
nary working elephant. As she stands here now, purr- 
ing through her black iron throat, 590 measures six- 



382 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

teen feet three inches from rails to stack-top. Both 
engines blow out steam, that rolls up in silver clouds 
to the electric lights. 

Bullard climbs to his place at the right, and a hiss 
of air tells that he is testing the brakes. Under each 
car sixteen iron shoes close against sixteen wheels, 
and stay there. Down the length of the train goes the 
repair man with his kit, and makes sure that every 
contact is right, then pulls a rope four times at the rear, 
whereupon four hissing signals answer in the cab. 
Bullard shuts off the air. 

''It 's all there is to stop her with," says he, "so we 
take no chances with it. She 's got high-speed brakes 
on her, 590 has — one -hundred and ten pounds to the 
inch. Twenty- four, Dan," he adds, and snaps his 
watch. "We start at thirty." 

Dan chews on. "Bad wind to-night," he says; 
"reg'lar gale." 

Bullard nods. "I know it; we 're fifteen minutes 
late, too." 

"Make Burlington on time?" 

"Got to ; you hit it up, and I '11 skin her. Twenty- 
six, Dan." 

Four minutes to wait. Two station officials come 
up with polite inquiries. The thermometer is falling, 
they say, and we shall have it bitter cold over the plains. 
They reach up with cordial hand-shakes. I pull, my 
cap down, and take my stand behind Bullard. Our 
side of the cab is quite cut off from the fireman's side 
by a swelling girth of boiler, which leaves an alley- 
way at right and left wide enough for a man's body and 
no wider. Bullard and I are in the right-hand alley- 
way, Bullard's back and black cap just before me. 
Dan, with his shovel, is out on a shaky steel shelf be- 
hind, that bridges the space between engine and ten- 



THE LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEER 383 

der. That is where he works, poor lad ! We are 
breathing coal-dust and torch-smoke and warm oil. 

"F-s-s-s-s-s !" comes the signal, and instantly we are 
moving. Lights flash about us everywhere — green 
lights, white lights, red lights, a phantasmagoria of 
drug-store bottles. The tracks shine yellow far ahead. 
A steady pounding and jarring begins, and grows like 
the roar of battle. Our cab heaves with the tugging of 
a captive balloon. Our speed increases amazingly. We 
seem constantly on the point of running straight 
through blocks of houses, and escape only by sudden 
and disconcerting swayings around curves that all lead, 
one will vow, straight into black chasms under the 
dazzle. Whoever rides here for the first time feels 
that he is ticketed for sure destruction, understands that 
this plunging engine must necessarily go off the rails 
in two or three minutes, say five at the latest; for 
what guidance, he reasons, can any man get from a 
million crazy lights, and who that is human can avoid 
a snarl in such a tangle of bumping switches? I 
am free to confess, for my own part, that I found 
the first half hour of my ride on 590 absolutely ter- 
rifying. 

Thus, at break-neck speed, we come out of Chicago, 
all slow-going city ordinances to the contrary notwith- 
standing. We are chasing a transcontinental record 
schedule, and have fifteen minutes to make up. I 
breathe more freely as we get into open country. We 
are going like the wind, but the track is straighter, and 
the darkness comfortable. I begin to notice things 
with better understanding. As the lurches come, I 
brace myself against the boiler side without fear of 
burning ; that is something learned. I find out later that 
I owe this protection to a two-inch layer of asbestos. 
I catch a faint sound of the engine bell, and discover, 



384 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

to my surprise, that it has been ringing from the start — ■ 
indeed, it rings, without ceasing, all the way to Bur- 
lington, the rope pulled by a steam jerking contrivance, 
but the roar of the engine drowns it. 

Deep shadows inwrap the cab, all the deeper for the 
glare that flashes through them every minute or two as 
Dan, back there on his iron shelf, stokes coal in at the 
red-hot door. Two faint lights burn for the gages — 
a jumping water column in front, a pair of wavering 
needles on the boiler. These Bullard watches coolly, 
and from time to time reaches back past me to turn the 
injector-cock, whereupon steam hisses by my head. For 
the most part he is quite still, like an Indian pilot, head 
forward at the lookout window, right hand down by 
the air-brake valve, left hand across the throttle lever, 
with only a second's jump to the reversing lever that 
rises up from the floor straight before him. As we 
race into towns and roar through them, he sounds the 
chime whistle, making its deep voice challenge the dark- 
ness. At curves he eases her with the brakes. And 
for grades and level stretches and bridges he notches 
the throttle up or down as the need is. Watch his big, 
strong grip on the polished handles ! Think of the 
hours he spends here all alone, this man who holds 
life and death in his quick, sure judgment ! 

Now he catches the window-frame and slides it open. 
A blast sweeps in like an arctic hurricane. Bullard 
leans out into the night and seems to listen. "Try it," 
he cries, but his voice is faint. I put my head out, 
and come into a rush of air billows that strangle like 
breakers. 

"Greggs — Hill — three — miles — long. Let — her — go 
— soon." He closes the window. And now, as we 
clear the grade, begins a burst of speed that makes 
the rest of small account. Faster and faster we go, 



THE LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEER 



385 



until the very iron seems alive and straining under- 
neath us. I am tossed about in hard pitches. The 
glow of the furnace lights up continuously. There is 
no sense of fear any longer. It is too splendid, what 




AT THE THROTTLE. 



we are doing. Of course it means instant death if any- 
thing breaks. Let the massive side rod that holds the 
two drivers snap, and a half-ton knife sweeping seventy 
miles an hour will slice off our cab and us with it like 
a cut of cheese. Did not an engineer go to his death 
that way only last week on the Union Pacific run? 
After all, why not this death as well as any other? 

25 



386 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

Have we not valves and tubes in our bodies that may 
snap at any moment! 

"How — fast?" I call out. 

"Eighty — miles — an — hour," says Bullard, close to 
my ear, and a moment later pulls the rope for a grade 
crossing. "Ooooo — ooooo — oo — oo," answers the 
deep iron voice, two long and two short calls, as the 
code requires. "Year — ago — killed — two — men — here," 
he shouts as we whiz over the road. "Struck — buggy 
— threw — men — sixty — feet." I wonder how far we 
would throw them now. 

In the two hundred and 'six miles' run to the Missis- 
sippi we stop only twice — for water, at Mendota and 
at Galesburg — nine minutes wasted for the two, and 
the gale blowing harder. Our schedule makes allow- 
ance for no stops ; every moment from our actual going 
is so much "dead time" that must be fought for, sec- 
ond by second, and made up. Drive her as he will, 
with all the cunning of his hand, Bullard can score but 
small gains against the wind. And some of these he 
loses. At Mendota we have made up seven minutes, 
but we pull out thirteen minutes late. At Princeton 
we are fifteen minutes late, at Galva fourteen minutes, 
at Galesburg eight minutes, but we pull out twelve min- 
utes late. Then we make the last forty-three miles, 
including bridges, towns, grades, and curves, in forty- 
four minutes, and draw into Burlington at 1.22 a.m. — 
on time to the dot. This because Bullard had sworn 
to do it; also because the road beyond Galesburg runs 
west instead of southwest, and it is easier for a train 
to bore straight through a gale, head on, than to take it 
from the quarter. 

We took the big, steady curve at Princeton, a down- 
grade helping us, at a hundred miles an hour; — so Bul- 
lard declares and what he says about engine-driving I 



THE LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEER 387 

believe. Indeed, these great bursts can be measured 
only by the subtle senses of an expert, since no register- 
ing instrument has been devised to make reliable record. 
Across the twin high bridges that span the Bureau 
creeks we shot with a rush that left the reverberations 
far back in the night like two short barks. And just 
as we rounded a curve before these bridges I saw a 
black face peering down from the boiler-top, while a 
voice called out: "Wahr — wahr — wahr — wahr!" To 
which startling apparition Bullard, undisturbed, re- 
plied : "Wahr — wahr — wahr — wahr !" Then the head 
disappeared. Dan, from his side, was telling Bul- 
lard that he had seen the safety-light for the bridges, 
and Bullard was answering something about hitting it 
up harder. How these men understand each other in 
such tumult is a mystery to one with ordinary hearing, 
but somehow they manage it. 

Half way between Kewanee and Galva a white light 
came suddenly into view far ahead. I knew it for the 
headlight of a locomotive coming toward us on the 
parallel track. Already we had met two or three 
trains, and swept past them with a smashing of sound 
and air. But this headlight seemed different from the 
others, paler in its luster, not so steady in its glare. 
The ordinary locomotive comes at you with a calm, 
staring yellow eye that grows until it gets to be a huge 
full moon. But it comes gradually, without much 
jumping or wavering. This light danced and flashed 
like a great white diamond. I watched it with a cer- 
tain fascination, and as it came nearer and nearer, real- 
ized that here was a train of different kind from the 
others, coming down on us at terrific speed. And Bul- 
lard shouted : "Number — 8 — with — the — mail." Then 
added, as the train passed like the gleam of a knife: 
"She 's — going — too." 



II 



WE PICK UP SOME ENGINE LORE AND HEAR 
ABOUT THE DEATH OF GIDDINGS 

THE next day, with comfortable rocking-chairs to 
sit in and a row of hotel windows before us, Bui- 
lard and I found time for engine chat, and I was well 
content. First I asked him about putting his head 
out of the cab window there at Greggs Hill and else- 
where. "Was it to see better?" said I. 

"No," said Bullard ; "it was to hear better and to 
smell better." 

"Hear what? Smell what?" 

"Hear the noises of the engine. If any little thing 
was working wrong, I 'd hear it. If there was any 
wear on the bearings, I 'd hear it. Why, if a mouse 
squeaked somewhere inside of 590, I guess I 'd hear it." 

Then he went on to explain that the ordinary roar of 
the engine, which drowned everything for me, was to 
him an unimportant background of sound that made 
little impression, and left his ears free for other sounds. 

"I get so accustomed to listening to an engine," he 
added, "that often up home, talking with my wife and 
child, I find myself trying to hear sounds from the 
round-house. And, after a run, I talk to people as if 
they were deaf." 

"You spoke about smelling better." 

"That 's right. I can smell a hot box in a minute, 
or oil burning. All engineers can. Why, there 
was — " 

388 



THE LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEER 389 

This led to the story of poor Giddings, killed on 590 
three years before through this very necessity of put- 
ting his head out of the cab window. Giddings had 
Bullard's place, and was one of the most trusted men 
in the Burlington employ. 

"You saw last night," said Bullard, "how the boiler 
in 590 shuts off the engineer from the fireman. And 
prob'ly you noticed those posts along the road that 
hold the tell-tale strings. They 're to warn crews on 
freight-car tops when it is time to duck for bridges. 
Well, Giddings was coming along one night between 
Biggsville and Gladstone — that 's about ten miles be- 
fore you get to the Mississippi. He was driving her 
fast to make up time, sixty miles an hour easy, and he 
put his head out to hear and to smell, the way I 've 
explained it. 

"There must have been a post set too near the track, 
and anyway 590's cab is extra wide, so the first thing 
he knew — and he did n't know that — his head was 
knocked clean off, or as good as that, and there was 
590, her throttle wide open, tearing along, with a fire- 
man stoking for all he was worth and a dead engineer 
hanging out the window. 

"So they ran for eight miles, and Billy Maine — he 
was firing — never suspected anything wrong — for of 
course he could n't see — until they struck the Missis- 
sippi bridge at full speed. You remember crossing 
the bridge just before we pulled in here. It 's twenty- 
two hundred feet long, and we always give a long 
whistle before we get to it, and then slow down. 
That 's the law," he added, smiling, "and, besides, 
there 's a draw to look out for. When he heard no 
whistle this time, Billy Maine jumped around quick to 
where Giddings was, and then he saw he had a corpse 
for a partner." 




'THEV STRUCK THE MISSISSIPPI BRIDGE AT FULL SPEED. 



THE LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEER 391 

Another question I asked was about stopping a train 
at great speed for an emergency — how quickly could 
they do it? "I 've stopped," said Bullard, "in nine 
hundred and fifty feet, pulling five cars that were mak- 
ing about sixty-two miles an hour. I don't know what 
I could do with this new train, only three cars, and 
going eighty or ninety miles an hour. That 's a hard 
proposition." 

"Would you reverse her?" 

"No, sir. All engineers who know their business 
will agree on that. I 'd shut the throttle off, and put 
the brakes on full. But I would n't reverse her. If 
I did, the wheels would lock in a second, and the whole 
business would skate ahead as if you 'd put her on ice." 

Then we talked about the nerve it takes to run an 
engine, and how a man can lose his nerve. It 's like 
a lion-tamer who wakes up some morning and finds 
that he 's afraid. Then his time has come to quit 
taming lions, for the beasts will know it if he does n't, 
and kill him. There are men who can stand these 
high-speed runs for ten 3^ears, but few go beyond that 
term, or past the forty-five-year point. Slow-going 
passenger trains will do for them after that. Others 
break down after five years. Many engineers — skilled 
men, too — would rather throw up their jobs than take 
the run Bullard makes. Not that they feel the danger 
to be so much greater in pushing the speed up to sev- 
enty, eighty, or ninety miles an hour, but they simply 
cannot stand the strain of doing the thing. 

"This doubling up is what breaks my heart," said 
Bullard. "Since they 've put on their new schedule 
I have to divide 590 with another fellow. John Kelly 
takes her on the fast run East while I wait here and 
rest. And so I 've lost my sweetheart, and I don't feel 
near as much interest in her as I did. You see, she ain't 



392 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

mine any more. And, between you and me," he added, 
confidentially, "I don't think 590 likes it much herself; 
you see, engines are a good deal like girls, after all." 

The next night, in workman's garb again, I made 
my way to a gloomy round-house, ready for the run 
to Omaha. I was to ride the second relay, as far as 
Creston, on locomotive 1201, with Jake Myers in the 
cab, so I had been informed. Being hours ahead of 
time, I saw something of round-house life. 

First, I followed a gaunt, black-faced Swede, with 
stubby beard, through his duties as locomotive hostler ; 
saw him take the tired engines in hand, as they came 
in one after another from hard runs, and care for them 
as stable hostlers care for horses. There were fires 
to be dropped in the clinker-pit, coal and wood to be 
loaded in from the chutes, water-tanks to be filled, 
sand-boxes looked after, and, finally, there was the 
hitching fast of the weary monsters in empty stalls, 
whither they were led from the lumbering turn-table 
with the last head of steam left over dead fire-boxes. 
And now spoke the Swede : 

"Dem big passenger-engines can werry easy climb 
over dem blocks and go through the brick wall," and 
he pointed to a great semicircle of cold engine-noses, 
ranged along not two feet from the round-house wall. 

Later on, in the dimty lighted locker-room, I lis- 
tened to round-house men swapping yarns about acci- 
dents, and to threats of a fireman touching a certain 
yardmaster set apart by general consent for a licking. 

Finally an Irishman came in, James Byron, and for 
all his good-natured face he seemed in ill humor. It 
turned out that he had just received a hurry order to 
take 1 20 1 out in Myers's place. 

"Jake is sick," he said, "and they 've sent for me. 
But I 'm sick, too. Was in bed with the grip. Just 



THE LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEER 393 

took ten grains of quinine. Say, I ain't any more fit 
to run an engine than I am to run a Sunday-school." 

Then he began pulling on his overalls, while the 
others laughed at him, told him he was "scared" of the 
fast run, and said good-by with mock seriousness. 

But Byron showed himself a good soldier, and soon 
was working over 1201 with a will, inspecting every 
inch of her, torch in hand, and he assured me he would 
take her through all right, grip or no grip. 

And take her through he did. At 1.16 a.m. my old 
friend, locomotive 590, brought the flier up from Chi- 
cago, six minutes ahead of the schedule. Kelly had 
done himself proud this time. And six minutes later, 
on time to the minute, we drew out behind 1201, with 
Byron handling her and seventy tons of mail following 
after. 

Our fireman was named Bellamy. He wore isin- 
glass goggles against the heat, and, in his way, he 
was a humorist, as I discovered presently, when he 
came close to me (we were running at a sixty-mile 
gait), and, grinning like a Dante demon, remarked 
slowly : "Say — if — we — go — in — the — ditch — will — 
you — come — along ?" 

The first feature of this run was some trouble with 
a feed-pipe from the tank, which brought us to a sudden 
standstill in the open night with a great hissing of 
steam. 

"What is it?" I asked of Bellamy, while Byron, 
grumbling maledictions, hammered under the truck. 

"Check-valve stuck; water can't get into the boiler." 

"How did he know it?" 

"Water-gage." 

"What if he had n't noticed it?" 

Bellamy smiled in half contempt. "Say, if he had n't 
noticed it for fifteen minutes, we 'd have been sailine 



394 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

over them trees about this time — in pieces. She 'd 
have bust her boiler." 

Five minutes lost here, and we were off again, run- 
ning presently into a thick fog, then into rain, and, 
finally, into a snow-storm. Never shall I forget the 
illusion, due to our great speed, that the flakes were 
rushing at us horizontally, shooting upward in sharp 
curves over the engine's headlight. And, as we swept 
on, the shadow of 1201 advanced beside us on the 
stretch of white snow as smoothly and silently as the 
tail of an eclipse. The engine itself was a noisy, hur- 
rying affair, but the engine's shadow was as calm and 
quiet as a cloud. And I recall that the swiftness of 
our rush this night caused in me neither fear nor any 
particular emotion, although this was practically the 
same experience that had stirred me so the night before 
on 590. And I realized that riding on a swift locomo- 
tive may become a matter of course like other strange 
things. 



Ill 



SOME MEMORIES OF THE GREAT RECORD-BREAK- 
ING RUN FROM CHICAGO TO BUFFALO 

THERE is a place in New York — the very last 
place one would think of — where stories without 
end may be heard about locomotives and the men who 
drive them ; it is not a place of grime and steam, but a 
quiet and luxurious club spreading over the top floor 
of a very tall building on Forty-second Street, and 
here every day at luncheon-time railroad officials 
gather : superintendents, managers, and various heads 
of departments, men who may have grown prosperous 
and portly, but are always proud to talk about the boys 
at the throttle, and recall experiences of their own in 
certain exciting runs. 

In the wide hall near the entrance of this Transpor- 
tation Club is a driving-wheel, green painted, from 
the De Witt Clinton, the first locomotive that drew a 
passenger train in the State of New York. It is 
scarcely larger than a wagon-wheel, though made of 
iron, and an inscription sets forth how it made the 
historic run from Albany to Schenectady on August 9, 
1 83 1. The walls show many pictures, famous locomo- 
tives, scenes of accidents, and there are thrilling mem- 
ories here in abundance if one have with him some 
veteran of the road to recall them. 

"It 's not always the most serious accidents that 
frighten a man most," remarked a high official on the 
New York Central, one day, while the rest of us lis- 

395 



396 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

tened. "One of the worst scares I ever had was on a 
freight train when there really was n't anything to be 
scared about. We had just pulled out of Ottumwa, 
Iowa, one dark night, with a caboose full of passengers, 
when rump — ump — bang — rip ! You never heard such 
a racket. First one end of the car was lifted up off the 
rails and slammed down again, and then the other end 
was treated the same way; up and down we went, 
bump, bump, bump ! and smash went the window, and 
out went the lights. Now, what do you suppose it 
was?" 

"Hog under the wheels?" suggested one of the group. 

"More likely a mule," said another. "There 's no- 
thing so tough as the hind leg of a mule. Is n't a 
car-wheel made that '11 cut through one." 

"It was n't a mule or a hog, and it was n't anything 
alive, but it got us into a panic, all right. We waved a 
lantern like fury to the engineer ahead, but he did n't 
see it for a good while, and we just bumped along, ex- 
pecting every second to be split into kindling-wood. 
We stopped at last, and found it was a beer-keg; yes, 
sir, an empty beer-keg that had got caught under the 
caboose between the rear axle and the bolster of the 
truck, and had rolled along over the ties with the car 
balanced on it like a man riding a rail. Was n't 
broken, either ; no, sir, not a bit ; and we had to chisel 
through every blamed hoop before we could get it 
out. Talk about making things strong — that beer-keg 
was a wonder!" 

"I had a more exciting experience than that," said 
another official — he was in the freight-handling depart- 
ment. "It was a long time ago — yes, back in '63. I 
remember getting out at a station near Cincinnati to 
look at some soldiers, and before I knew it the train 
started. I was up by the engine, and as the drivers 



THE LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEER 397 

began to turn I jumped on the cow-catcher. You see, 
I had often ridden there, being a railroad-man, and 
the engineer knew me. 

"Everything went well for a few miles, and I sat 
on the bumper enjoying the rush of air, for it was a 




"AS THE DRIVERS BEGAN TO TURN I JUMPED ON THE COW-CATCHER." 



hot summer's day ; but presently, as we swung around 
a curve, the engine gave a fearful shriek, and just 
ahead I saw a farmer's wagon crossing the track. 
There were two old men on the seat and an old white 
horse in the shafts. The men were so busy talking 
they never heard the whistle, or perhaps they were 
deaf. Anyhow, we were right on them before they 
looked up, and then they were too dazed to do any- 
thing. One of them made a grab for the reins, but I 
saw it was too late, and I drew my legs up off the 
bumper and leaned back against the end of the boiler 
(I must have made a picture as I crouched there) ; and 
the next second — " 



398 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

"Well?" said somebody. 

"Well — I guess you would n't care to hear how 
things looked the next second. We struck the white 
horse just back of his forelegs, and I had him on my 
lap for a hundred yards or so. No, it did n't hurt me, 
but it was n't pleasant. The two old men? I don't 
think they felt anything, it was so sudden ; they just — 
passed out. No, I did n't see them; but I can tell you 
this, I 've never ridden on the cow-catcher of a locomo- 
tive since that day." 

There followed some talk about fast runs, and all 
agreed that for out-and-out excitement there is nothing 
in railroading to equal a man's sensations in one of 
those mad bursts of speed that are ventured upon now 
and then by locomotives in record-breaking trials. The 
heart never pounds with apprehension in a real acci- 
dent as it does through imminent fear of an accident. 
And so great is the nerve-strain and brain-strain upon 
the men who drive our ordinary fliers, that three hours 
at a stretch is as much as the stanchest engineer can 
endure running at fifty or sixty miles an hour. 

"So you see," said one of the officials, "the problem 
of higher speeds than we have at present involves more 
than boiler power and strength of machinery and the 
swiftness of turning wheels — it involves the question 
of human endurance. We can build engines that 
will run a hundred and fifty miles an hour, but where 
shall we find the men to drive them ? Already we have 
nearly reached the limit of what eyes and nerves can 
endure. I guess we '11 have to find a new race of men 
to handle these 'locomotives of the future' that they 
talk so much about." 

He went on to consider the chance of color-blindness 
in an engineer, and told how the men's eyes are regu- 
larly tested by experts, who put before them skeins 






THE LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEER 399 

of various-colored yarns, and make them pick out 
green from red, and so on. It is not pleasant to think 
what might happen if an engineer's eyes should sud- 
denly fail him, and he should mistake the danger light 
for safety and go ahead at some critical moment in- 
stead of stopping. Nor does one like to fancy what 
might happen if an engineer should go mad at his post. 

"I know one case where an engineer did go mad," 
remarked a superintendent. "He was one of our most 
experienced men, and had held the throttle for years 
on the fastest trains. Then, one Sunday, for no rea- 
son at all, he went to the round-house, got out the 
'pony' locomotive — that 's the one fixed up with a little 
parlor over the boiler, and easy-chairs and polished 
wood — it makes a pretty observation-car for big offi- 
cials. Well, he got her out and started lickety-split 
up the main line, running wild and without orders. 
He stopped at Mott Haven, and told the men he wanted 
the 'pony' rebuilt and silver-plated — crazy as a loon, 
you see. Yes, he 's in the asylum now, poor fellow; 
that was his last run." 

After this one of the group gave his memories of 
the famous speed trial on the Lake Shore road, when 
five locomotives in relays, driven by picked men, set out 
to beat all records in a run of 510 miles from Chicago 
to Buffalo. This was in October, 1895, and I suppose 
such elaborate preparations for a dash over the rails 
were never made. All traffic was suspended for the 
passage of this racing special ; every railroad crossing 
between Chicago and Buffalo was patrolled by a sec- 
tion-man — that alone meant thirteen hundred guards; 
and every switch was spiked half an hour before the 
train was due. The chief officials of the Lake Shore 
road proposed to ride this race in person, and, if pos- 
sible, smash the New York Central's then recent 



400 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

world's record of 63.61 miles an hour, including all 
stops, over the 436^2 miles between New York and 
Buffalo. They had before them a longer run than 
that, and hoped to score a greater average speed per 
mile ; but they wished to come through alive, and were 
taking no chances. 

It was half-past three in the morning, and frosty 
weather, when the train started from Chicago, with 
Mark Floyd at the throttle, and various important 
people — general managers, superintendents, editors, 
etc. — on the cars behind. There were two parlor- 
coaches, weighing 92,500 pounds each, and a million- 
aire's private car, one of the finest and heaviest in the 
country, weighing 119,500 pounds, which made a total 
load, counting engine and train, of something over two 
hundred tons. 

The first relay was 87 miles to Elkhart, Indiana, 
and the schedule they hoped to follow required that 
they cover this distance in 78 minutes, including nine 
"slow-downs." Eighty-seven miles in 78 minutes was 
well enough; but the superintendent of the Western 
Division had set his heart on doing it in 75 minutes, 
and had promised Mark Floyd two hundred good 
cigars for every quarter of a minute he could cut under 
that time. But alas for human plans ! Between up 
grades and the darkness they pulled into Elkhart at five 
minutes to five, which was 85 minutes for the 87 miles 
— not bad going, but it left them seven minutes behind 
the schedule, and left Mark to console himself with his 
old clay pipe. 

One hundred and thirty-one seconds were lost at 
Elkhart in changing locomotives, and it was three min- 
utes to five when big 599, with Dave Luce in the cab, 
turned her nose toward the dawning day and started 
for Toledo, 133 miles away. Great things were ex- 




5 



26 



402 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

pected in this relay, for about half of it was straight as 
a bird's flight and down grade, too, so that hopes were 
high of making up lost time, especially as Luce had the 
reputation of stopping at nothing when it was a ques- 
tion of "getting there." He certainly did wonders, 
and five minutes after the start he had the train at a 
62-mile gait, and ten minutes later at a 67-mile gait. 
Then they struck frost on the rails and the speed 
dropped, while the time-takers studied their stop- 
watches with serious faces. 

At ten minutes to six they reached Waterloo and 
the long, straight stretch. As they whizzed past the 
station, Dave pulled open his throttle to the last notch 
and yelled to his fireman. Here was where they had 
to do things. Butler was y]/ 2 miles away, the first 
town in the down grade, and they made it in 6 minutes 
and 40 seconds,, nearly 68 miles an hour. In the next 
7 miles Dave pushed her up to 70 an hour, then 
to 72 J4, and let her out in a great burst which made the 
passengers sit up, and showed for several miles a top- 
notch rate of 87 miles an hour. Nevertheless, taking 
account of frost and slow-downs, they barely finished 
the relay on schedule time, so that for the whole run 
they were still seven minutes behind time ; the schedule 
they had set themselves called for such tremendous 
speed that it seemed almost impossible to make up a 
single lost minute. 

The third relay was 108 miles to Cleveland, and they 
did it in 104 minutes, including many slow-downs and 
a heart-breaking loss of four minutes when a section- 
hand red-flagged the train and brought it to a dead stop 
from a 70-mile gait because he had found a broken 
rail. The officials were in such a state of tension that 
they would almost have preferred chancing it on the 
rail to losing those four minutes. There is a point of 



THE LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEER 403 

eagerness in railroad racing where it seems nothing to 
risk one's life ! 

The train drew out of Cleveland 19 minutes behind 
the time they should have made for a world's record. 
Every man had done his best, every locomotive had 
worked its hardest, but fate seemed against them and 
hopes of beating the Central's fast run were fading 
rapidly. The fourth relay was to Erie, 95^ miles, 
and some said that Jake Gardner with 598 might pull 
them out of the hole, but the others shook their heads. 
At any rate, Jake did better than those who had pre- 
ceded him, and he danced that train along at 75, 80, 
84 miles an hour, so the watches said, and averaged 
67 miles an hour for the whole relay. 

"It 's the kind of thing that makes you taste your 
heart, and packs a week into ten minutes," said the 
superintendent, telling about it. "You may take one 
ride smashing around curves at 80 miles an hour, but 
you '11 never take another." 

Still, in spite of these brave efforts, they pulled out 
of Erie 15 minutes late, and started on the last relay 
with gloomy faces. It was 86 miles to Buffalo, the 
end of the race, and they must be there by eleven thirty- 
one to win, which called for an average speed of over 
70 miles an hour, including slow-downs. No train 
in the world had ever approached such an average, and 
their own racing average since leaving Chicago was 
much below it. So what hope was there ? 

There was hope in a tall, sparely built man named 
Bill Tunkey, whom nobody knew much about except 
that he was a good engineer with a rather clumsy 
ten-wheel locomotive not considered very desirable in 
a race. All the other locomotives had been eight- 
wheelers. Still, the new engine had one advantage, 
that she carried water enough in her tank for the whole 



404 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

run, and need not slow up to refill, as the others had 
done. She had another advantage — that she carried 
Tunkey, one of those men who rise up in sudden emer- 
gencies and do things, whether they are possible or 
not. It was not possible, everybody vowed, to reach 
Buffalo Creek by eleven thirty-one. "All right," said 
Tunkey, quietly, and then — 

Within forty rods of the start he had his engine 
going 30 miles an hour, and he pressed her harder and 
harder until 1 1 miles out of Erie she struck an 80-mile 
pace, and held it as far as Brockton, when she put forth 
all her strength and did a burst of 5 miles in 3^ min- 
utes, one cf these miles at the rate of 92 J4 miles an 

^>ur, as the watches showed. "And I never want any 
more of that in mine," said the superintendent. 

The next town was Dunkirk, where a local ordi- 
nance put a 10-mile limit on the speed of trains. Tun- 
key smiled as they roared past the station at more 
than 80. A crowd lined the tracks here, for the tele- 
graph had carried ahead the news of a hair-raising run. 
That crowd was only a blur to staring, frightened eyes 
at the car-windows. The officials were beginning to 
realize what kind of an engineer they had ahead this 
time. Whizzzzz ! How they did run ! Wahr ! 
Wahr ! barked the little bridges and were left behind ! 
H-o-0-0 ! bellowed a tunnel. And rip, whrrr ! as they 
slammed around a double reverse curve with a vicious 
swing that made the bolts rattle in the last car. Men 
put their mouths to other men's ears and tried to say 
that perhaps Mr. Tunkey was getting a little over- 
zealous. Much good that did! Mr. Tunkey had the 
bit in his teeth now and was playing the game alone. 

At eleven-six they swept past Silver Creek with 29 
miles to go and 25 minutes to make it in. Hurrah! 
They had made up time enough to save them! 



THE LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEER 405 

At eleven-twenty they passed Lake View. 

"Twelve miles more, and 11 minutes," yelled some- 
body, waving his hat. 

"Toboggan-slide all the way," yelled somebody else. 
"We '11 do it easy. Hooray !" 

They passed Athol Springs at eleven-twenty-four, 
all mad with excitement. They had 7 minutes left 
for 8 miles, and were cheering already. 

"We '11 make it with half a minute to spare," said the 
only man in the private car who was reasonably cool. 
He was six seconds out of the way, for they crossed 
the line twenty-six seconds before eleven thirty-one, 
and won the race by less than half a minute, beating the 
New York Central's record per mile on the whole ru 
by the fraction of a second, and beating the whore 
world's record in the last relay by several minutes, the 
figures standing — Tunkeys figures — 86 miles from 
Erie to Buffalo in 70 minutes and 46 seconds, or an 
average speed of 72.91 miles an hour. 

"Do?" said the official. "What did we do? Why, 
we — we — " He paused helplessly, and then added, 
with a grin : "Well, we did n't do a thing to Tunkey !" 



27 



IV 



WE HEAR SOME THRILLING STORIES AT A ROUND- 
HOUSE AND REACH THE END OF THE BOOK 

IT was in the round-house at Forty-fifth Street, a 
place of drip and steam and oil smears, that I lis- 
tened to Bronson and Lewis, two good men at the 
throttle, as they held forth on the subject of killing 
people with an engine. 

"After all, it 's an easy death," said Bronson. 

"I know," said Lewis; "but I don't like it, just the 
same — I mean killing 'em." 

"Last one I killed," observed Bronson, "was a 
woman, wife of a congressman, they said, all done up 
in furs. 'Member her?" 

"Up by New Rochelle?" 

"Yes, sir, there at the platform end, where they 'ye 
made a path over the tracks. Too lazy to follow the 
road, those folks are. Take a short cut and get killed. 
Well, this congressman's wife, she sauntered across 
just as I came through with the express. Never turned 
her head. Never heard the whistle. Queer about 
women, ain't it?" 

Lewis nodded. 

"Had four minutes to make up, and we were goi' 
good — fifty-five an hour easy. Slammed the brak 
on, but — pshaw! Congressman's wife she stopped the 
last second,, and that settled it. If she 'd taken one 
more step I 'd have scraped by her, but she stopped. 
Had to kill her. What 's a man to do?" 

406 



THE LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEER 407 

"Why did she stop?'' I asked. 

'Oh, some idea. Prob'ly forgot where she was. 
: lady. Makes a man sick." 

Tell ye what I think," said Lewis. "I think there 's 

omen start across a track to take a chance. If they 

et hit it 's all right, and if they don't it 's all right. 

Same as girls pull leaves off a flower to see if some 

fellow loves 'em. There was — " 

"She did n't do that," put in Bronson. 

"I don't say she did, but some might. There was 
a woman up at Larchmont walked across in front of 
me the other day. Had a baby, too, in her arms. 
Now, why should a woman start over four tracks just 
as I was coming, and walk slow, if she did n't want to 
take a chance? Mind you, I was on the far side, and 
she had to cross three tracks before she got to mine. 
And all the time I had the whistle wide open. Why, a 
dog would have heard that whistle and got out o' the 
way." 

"Did you — " I began. 

"Hit her? I did n't know at the time, it was such 
a close call. Thought I had, but I found out after- 
vard she got past — by the skin of her teeth. Bet you 
she 'd had some trouble. Thought she might as well 
quit the game and take the baby along. Then, mebbe, 
she was glad when she got across safe." 

"Can't tell," reflected Bronson. 

"I b'lieve there 's such a thing as people getting 
drawn to a train. I don't mean by the suction, but 

wn by the idea of its going so blamed fast and being 

strong, especially people sick or down on their luck. 
inIow, last year I was coming through Rye one morn- 
ing, and as I struck the bridge after that reverse curve 
I saw two young fellows running along the No. 3 track 
away from me. I was on No. 1 track, so they were all 



408 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

right, but as I came up they both swung over to No. I, 
and I cut 'em all to bits. Turned out they were a 
couple of lads. that had tramped it down from Boston, 
goin' to enlist. They were weak and hungry, and I 
think they just gave up to the train because they 
could n't help it." 

"Might be," said Bronson. 

"Tell ye who was the nerviest man I ever killed," 
went on Lewis. "Fellow in West Haven. Say, but 
we were coming that night ! Northampton express, 
ye know, and a down grade over the salt meadows. 
First thing I knew a man was standing at the side of 
the track, fairly close, but not where he 'd get hit. I 
thought he was some friend of mine in West Haven 
trying to make me whistle. But when I got near him, 
say a hundred feet away, he stepped out between the 
rails and stood there a few seconds with his arms 
lifted and a smile on his face — quite a pretty smile. 
Then, just as I was on him he turned and knelt between 
the rails. I got the brakes on quick as I could, emer- 
gency and everything, but I could n't stop her in less 
than a length and a half, and — well, I guess you don't 
want to know what that engine looked like when I went 
over her." 

"I know," said Bronson, "they scatter something 
terrible. Say, I 've noticed that sort of pleasant look in 
their faces, too. Once I was waiting on a siding, and 
a man came up and spoke to me very polite, and wanted 
to know if I 'd please give him a drink of water. I 
told him the water in my tank was too warm to drink, 
but I let him have my cup and showed him where there 
was a spring right near. He thanked me and walked 
over to it, and I watched him bend down and take two 
good drinks, then he brought the cup back and thanked 
me asain. 




1 DRAWN BY THE IDEA OF ITS GOING SO BLAMED FAST AND BEING SO STRONG. 






410 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

' 'Any train along here soon?' he asked. 

'"Which way?' said I. 

" 'Don't matter which way,' said he. 

" 'There 's an up train due now,' said I; 'she 's the 
one I 'm waiting for.' 

' 'Is she a fast train?' he asked. 
'Fair,' said I ; ' 'bout fifty an hour along here.' 
'That 's good,' said he, and I wondered what he 
meant. He seemed like a nice man. 

"Pretty soon along came the up train, and I saw him 
run down the track to meet her. Then he stopped, 
faced sideways, and let himself fall square across the 
rails. Say, I was mighty glad I 'd fixed it so he had 
that drink of water. That was his last drink." 

"Queer how they like to be hit by a fast express," 
reflected Lewis, "when a slow freight would do just 
as well. Now, that man at West Haven, the one who 
took it kneeling down, he 'd waited around the tracks 
all day — the section-gang saw him — and he was n't 
doing a thing but picking out a train fast enough for 
him. He 'd stand ready for one, but when she 'd turn 
out to be an accommodation or something slow he 'd 
step away. Did n't propose to shake hands with any- 
thing under fifty an hour. Mine was the first one 
suited him." 

"Do you ever think of their faces?" I asked; "ever 
see them at night — the way they looked when you 
struck them !" 

"No," said Bronson; "can't say I ever do." 

Neither did Lewis. And I judge that engine-drivers 
are not deeply affected by these sad occurrences. 
Which is fortunate, for few escape them. Indeed, in 
going about from engine to engine I found the follow- 
ing dialogue repeated over and over again : 

"Ever in a collision?" 



THE LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEER 411 

"No, sir." 

"Ever go off the track ?" 

"No, sir." 

"Ever kill anybody?" 

"Oh, yes. Why, only last week I struck a — " Then 
would follow a story of sudden death. And they all 
spoke in a kindly but matter-of-fact way, as if these 
swift executions were part of their business. And I 
have it from a veteran that any engine-driver would 
sooner hit a man than a hog, for a hog is very "apt to 
wreck the train; a hog is worse than a horse, whereas 
a man makes no trouble ; he simply gets killed. 

Near the roaring round-house at Mott Haven is 
another interesting place— the "Young Men's Chris- 
tian Association Car," which is not a car at all, but a 
dingy shed built of four cars, and serving as lunch- 
room, wash-room, reading-room, and sleeping-room 
for men of the trains. This is a homely refuge spot, 
where any morning we may meet engineers resting 
after a hard night's run or making ready to go out 
again. Let us drop in and join one of the groups. 

Here is a man telling about the mad run "Big Ar- 
thur" made the other night down from Albany. We 
get just the tail of the story : "So the superintendent 
he ripped around about how they were twenty-seven 
minutes late, and Big Arthur he sat in the cab and 
never said a word. 'Now,' says the superintendent, 
rather sarcastic, T suppose you know this is the Empire 
State Express you 're running?' 'Yep,' says Big Ar- 
thur. 'Well, do you know what time she 's supposed 
to pull into the Grand Central?' 'Yep,' says Big Ar- 
thur again, and that 's all he did say ; but, holy smoke ! 
how they went ! Had those porters on the private car 
scared green ! A hundred miles an hour some o' the 
way, and they came in on time to the dot. Oh, you 



412 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

can't beat these new engines with the fire-box over the 
trailer; but say, was n't that great when Big Arthur 
snapped out 'Yep ' to the old man?" 

I asked if I might see Big Arthur, and one of the 
engineers said he 'd be along pretty soon, and in the 
meantime he told me about the individuality of loco- 
motives : how one is good-tempered and willing, while 
another is cranky; how the same locomotive will act 
differently at different times, just as people have 
whims, and how some locomotives are fated to ill luck, 
so that nobody wants to drive them. 

''Take these ten new engines the company 's just 
put on. They 're the finest and strongest made, a 
whole lot better than the ones we 've thought were won- 
ders on the Empire State. They 're beauties, and all 
exactly alike, measurements all the same; but every 
one of 'em has its own points, good and bad. One 
will go faster than another with just the same steam. 
One will pull a heavier load with less coal. And very 
likely there '11 be some kind of a hoodoo on one of 'em. 
Takes time, though, to find out these things. It 's 
like getting acquainted with a man." 

Other men came in now, and the talk changed to 
accidents. I asked if an engineer plans ahead what 
he will do in a collision. It seemed reasonable that a 
man always under such menace would have settled his 
mind on some prospective action. But they laughed 
at the idea, and declared that an engineer can no more 
tell how he will act in an emergency than the ordinary 
citizen can say what he would do in a fire, or how he 
would meet a burglar. One engineer would jump, an- 
other would stick to his throttle, and the chances of 
being killed were as good one way as the other. 

The mention of a burglar led one of the new-comers 
to tell of William Powell's adventure with some Sing 



THE LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEER 413 

Sing convicts. Powell was the oldest engineer on the 
New York Central. He died a year ago, and this 




"CONVICTS HAD REVOLVERS ALL RIGHT THAT TRIP AND DENNY 
THREW UP HIS HANDS." 

thing happened back in the seventies. It seems there 
was a trestle over the track about half a mile below 
the Sing Sing station, and on this trestle some convicts 
working in the quarry used to run little cars loaded 
with stone and dump them into the larger cars under- 



414 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

neath. Of course, they worked under the surveillance 
of well-armed guards. 

On one occasion, however, four or five convicts out- 
witted the guards by dropping from the trestle upon the 
tender of a moving locomotive, and the first thing the 
engineer knew he was set upon by a band of desperate 
men, who covered him and his fireman with revolvers. 
At the same moment half a dozen shots rang out, and 
bullets came crashing through the cab sides from the 
guards firing at random after the fleeing engine. Al- 
together it was quite the reverse of pleasant for Wil- 
liam Powell. 

"Out you go now, quick!" said the convicts; "we '11 
run this engine ourselves." 

The engine was No. 105, Powell's pride and pet, and 
he could not bear to have unregenerate hands laid 
upon her, so he spoke up very politely : "Let me run 
her for you, gentlemen; I '11 go wherever you say." 

They agreed to this, and some distance down the 
line left the engine and departed into the woods. 

"And the joke of it was," concluded the narrator, 
"that the revolvers those convicts had were made of 
wood painted black, and' could n't shoot any more 
than the end of a broom ! It was a big bluff, but it 
worked." 

"Was n't any bluff when Denny Cassin got held up 
at Sing Sing," said another engineer. "Convicts had 
revolvers all right that trip, and Denny threw up his 
hands same as any man would. That was twenty 
years ago, on old engine 89. It was right at the Sing 
Sing station, and three of 'em jumped into the cab 
all of a sudden and told Denny to open her up, and you 
bet he did. Then they told him to jump, and he 
jumped; but first he managed to fix her tank-valves so 
she 'd pump herself full of water and stop before she 'd 



THE LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEER 415 

gone far. That was Denny's great scheme, and he 
walked along laughing to think how mad those con- 
victs would be in a few minutes. 

"It turned out, though, that Denny spoiled a nice 
trap they 'd laid up at Tarrytown to catch those fel- 
lows when they got there. You see, the telegraph op- 
erator wired up the line that a runaway locomotive 
was coming with three escaped convicts on her, and 
the train despatcher at Tarrytown just set the switch so 
the locomotive would sail plump over a twelve-foot 
stone embankment down into the Hudson River. 
That 's what would have happened to those convicts if 
Denny had left his tank-valves alone, but, of course, 
89 got water-logged long before she reached Tarry- 
town; she just kicked out her cylinder-ends a few miles 
up the track and stopped. Then the convicts climbed 
down and skipped away. Two of 'em got caught af- 
terward, but there was one they never caught." 

Presently somebody reported that Big Arthur was 
out in the round-house, getting 2994 ready to take out 
the Empire State. It was clear enough that Big Ar- 
thur was an important figure in the eyes of these be- 
grimed men, and, setting forth across the yards, I 
came upon him presently, torch in hand, looking over 
his deep, purring locomotive against the dangers of 
the run. Another engineer by the fire-box was dis- 
cussing a theory of some of the boys, that a man can 
run his locomotive by his sense of time as well as by 
a watch. 

"Denny Cassin says he 'd agree to take the Empire 
State from Albany to New York and keep her right on 
the dot all the way, and bring her in on the minute, 
just by feeling. What d' ye think of that?" 

"That 's possible," said Big Arthur. "A man can 
feel how fast he 's going. He 's got to judge big speed 



416 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

by feeling, for there ain't any speed-recorder that 's 
much good, say above ninety miles an hour." 

At the first opportunity I explained to Big Arthur 
and his friend that I would very much like to draw 
upon their experience for some thrilling incidents in 
engine-driving. 

"Tell him about the time you went in the river," 
suggested Big Arthur. . 

"That was 'way back in '69," said the other, "when I 
was firing for 'Boney' Cassin, the brother of Denny. It 
was in winter, a bitter cold day, and the Hudson was 
so gorged with ice that part of the jam had squeezed 
over the bank and torn away our tracks. So pretty 
soon, when we came along with twenty-three cars of a 
train of merchandise, why in we went, and the old en- 
gine 'Troy' just skated ahead on her side into the river, 
smash through the ice, down to the bottom, and pulled 
thirteen cars after her. 

"You could n't see a piece of that engine above 
water as big as your hand, and how I got out alive is 
more than I know. Guess I must have jumped. Any- 
how, there I was on the broken floe, and I could hear 
the old Troy grinding away in the river, churning up 
water and ice like a crazy sea-serpent. She struggled 
for nearly a minute before her steam was cold and her 
strength gone. Then she lay still, dead. 

'T looked around for Boney; and at first I did n't 
see him. I thought he 'd gone down sure, and so he 
had ; but just as I was looking I saw a big black thing 
heave up through the ice, and I heard a queer cry. 
Well, that was Providence, sure! It seems the engine 
had ripped her cab clean off as she tore through the 
ice, and here was the cab coming up bottom side first, 
with Boney inside hanging on to a brace and almost 
dead. I hauled him out, and then we scrambled ashore 
over the wrecked cars. They were full of flour, and 



THE LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEER 417 

the barrels were all busted open, so by the time we 
reached the bank we looked like a twin Santa Claus 
made of paste, and three quarters drowned at that." 

"But Boney stuck to his throttle," I remarked. 

"Yes," said the other, "he stuck to his throttle. The 
boys generally do." 

After this I asked Big Arthur for a story, but he 
assured me he could n't think of anything special. 

"Tell about that woman on Eleventh Avenue," said 
his friend. 

"Yes," said I, "tell about her." 

"Oh," said Big Arthur, "that was n't much. I was 
pulling a freight train down Eleventh Avenue one day, 
going slow through the city, and at Thirty-fifth Street 
a woman turned down the track ahead of me. I whis- 
tled, but she never heard me. She was going market- 
ing, and could n't think of anything else. I saw I 'd 
strike her sure — there was n't time to stop — so I ran 
along the boiler-side to the pilot, and got there just as 
we were on her. Another second and she 'd have been 
under the wheels, I braced myself and made a jump 
at the woman, and struck her back of the neck with a 
shove that sent her sprawling off the track, with me 
after her. You see, I had to jump hard or I 'd have 
stayed on the track myself and gone under the engine." 

"Did it end in a romance?" I asked. 

"Romance nothing!" exclaimed Big Arthur. "That 
woman got up so mad — why, she called me names and 
clawed the skin off my face until — well, I could n't 
get shaved for three weeks afterward. In about a 
minute, though, she cooled off, and somebody told her 
I 'd saved her life — which I had — and then, sir, blamed 
if she did n't go down on her knees and try to kiss my 
feet, and pray I 'd forgive her. Say, that 's the only 
time I ever got prayed to." 

Here Big Arthur's fireman whispered something to 



418 CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING 

him, and the engineer nodded. ''That 's so, that 's a 
good story," and then he told how an old lady of sev- 
enty-five saved a New York Central express some years 
ago at Underhill Cut, about a mile south of Garrisons. 

"She 's a relative of my fireman, so I know the 
thing 's true ; besides that, the company gave her three 
hundred dollars. You see, it all happened one winter 
night, and this Mrs. Groves — that 's her name — was 
the only person near enough to do anything. She 
lived in a little house beside Underhill Cut, and about 
four o'clock in the morning she heard a frightful crash, 
and there was a freight train wrecked right in the 
cut, and cars piled up three or four deep over the 
tracks ! She knew the express might come along any 
minute, and of course it was a case of everybody 
killed if they ever struck that smash-up. So what does 
she do, this little old lady, but grab up a red petti- 
coat and a kerosene lamp, and run out as fast as she 
could in her bare feet, — yes, sir, and nothing on but her 
night-gown, — right through the snow. That 's the 
kind of a woman she was. 

"Well, she went clown the track until she heard the 
express coming, and then she took her red petticoat 
and held it up in front of the lamp so as to make a red 
light. And, what 's more, it worked ! The engineer 
saw the danger signal, slammed on his brakes, and 
stopped the train a few car-lengths from the wreck. 
Yes, sir, only a few car-lengths !" 

Big Arthur nodded thoughtfully, and climbed into 
the cab. It was time to go. 

In ending this chapter now, and with it the present 
series, I venture the opinion that the men who follow 
these Careers of Danger and Daring — the divers, stee- 
ple-climbers, and the rest — are very little different from 



Lb !\l 



THE LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEER 419 

their fellow-men, except as they have developed certain 
faculties by their exercise, and established in themselves 
the habit of courage. They were not born with any 
longing to do these daring acts, nor with any particular 
aptitude for them. They have been guided nearly al- 
ways by the drift of life and by opportunities that pre- 
sented. As to fear, they have the same capacity for it 
that we all have, and are serene in their peril only 
because they feel themselves, by their patience and 
skill, well armed against it. The steeple-climber 
would be afraid to go down in a diving-suit, the lion- 
tamer would be afraid to go up in a balloon, the pilot 
would be afraid to swing on the flying-bars, and so on. 

I will even go further, and say that the average good 
citizen who is sound of body has as great capacity for 
courage as any of these men. He could develop it if 
he cared to ; he would develop it if he had to. That is 
the main point, after all : these men must be brave, they 
must conquer their fear, and the only trouble with the 
average man is that nothing ever occurs to show him 
and those who know him what fine things he could do 
if the pressure were put upon him. Yet any day the 
test may come to anj^ one of us — pain to bear, losses 
to bear, bereavement to bear. And then the great test. 

Well, perhaps these humble heroes whose lives we 
have glanced at may give us a bit of their spirit for our 
own lives, the brave and patient spirit that will keep 
us unflinchingly at the hard thing, whatever it be, 
until we have conquered it. And perhaps we too may 
feel impelled to cultivate the habit of courage. That 
would be a fine inspiration indeed, and I can only hope 
that my readers may feel it. 



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